


The Enemy of Balance

by bcnobody



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Dyad (Star Wars), M/M, Not Canon Compliant - Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Redeemed Ben Solo, Rey Solo, Romance, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:29:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 39,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22842484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bcnobody/pseuds/bcnobody
Summary: Rey refuses Kylo Ren's hand and flees with the resistance. Ben Solo lives, but Rey is not sure she has the strength to reach him. Kylo Ren brings Rey new revelations about their bond and her past, but can he be trusted?Finn and Poe become inseparable, and Rey befriends Rose as the resistance regroups and rebuilds under the guidance of General Leia Organa.A TROS fix-it. No Final Order. Hux lives and continues to despise Kylo Ren, who shares the sentiment.Adventure, Romance (Reylo, Finn/Poe).
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 7
Kudos: 48





	1. The Bond is Broken

As the _Millennium Falcon_ pulled away from Crait, Rey did not see or sense anything of Kylo Ren back on the planet's surface. It was as if his rage had burned away the connection between them. All she got was a brief, wispy glimpse of him through the force bond as it disintegrated before her eyes. It was possible that the pain of her disappointment had something to do with the loss as well.

Luke had been right – it was a mistake to think she could show up on the _Supremacy_ and bring Ben Solo back. Perhaps it was not the light in him, but the darkness that called to her. Rey had been tempted to take his hand, sensing his deep conflict even as he offered her a place with him at the helm of the galaxy.

At the last moment, she resisted and refused him. Rey still wondered whether that decision was the right one. Perhaps she could not have Ben Solo, but perhaps there was light worth saving in Kylo Ren. Despite his unhinged pursuit of that vision of Luke, he'd been seared by the sacrifice Luke made for the resistance and for General Organa, who had lost her hope.

Rey could not get the images out of her mind – Kylo Ren kneeling broken and empty on the ground, staring up at her as if watching his soul depart with her on the _Falcon_ , and Kylo Ren looking at her with solemn hope, his hand extended, his dark figure framed by floating bits of fiery tapestry. But when Rey allowed herself to wonder what his vision of their future entailed, she recalled with horror how he stood calmly as the First Order's fleet continued to obliterate the resistance.

Fresh anger coursed through Rey at the memory as she sat alone in the cabin of the _Falcon._

“Rey.”

Finn called to her gently, and came to sit beside her.

“How is Rose?” asked Rey.

“I don't know. She's still out cold,” he said.

Finn folded his hands together in his lap and looked down at them.

“Are you okay?” Rey asked.

“I'm... fine,” he said, sounding surprised.

“I'm glad you're here,” Rey said.

“Yeah. Me too,” Finn said. “I'm glad you came back.”

Leia entered the room and both Rey and Finn sat up straighter.

“General Organa,” Rey murmured. “I sensed... Luke. He – ”

General Organa nodded.

“Yes, Luke,” she said heavily. “I felt it too, but I doubt this is the last we'll see of him.”

Rey frowned.

“But he – he's – isn't he?” she asked inarticulately, feeling silly as she stumbled over her words in front of the General.

“No one's ever really gone,” said the General, and it seemed to Rey that Luke had succeeded in restoring her hope. They both looked at Finn, who stood up.

“Ah, I'm going to... see if anyone needs help,” he mumbled, and left.

“Sorry to chase your friend away when he's been waiting so anxiously for your return, but I thought we should talk,” said the General, sitting down where Finn had been and fixing Rey with a piercing gaze.

Rey realized that she could sense the General clearly in the force now, far stronger than before Rey's trip to Ahch-To.

“Luke told me you went to see my son,” she said.

Rey nodded, a lump forming in her throat.

“Against his advice,” the General added.

Once again, Rey nodded.

“Tell me what happened, Rey,” she pleaded.

Rey did not want to say anything to the General, who looked vulnerable and frail. Her hope for Ben lived after all.

“While I was on Ahch-To I had a vision that he turned and embraced the Light,” said Rey. “Luke told me not to go, but I had to try. He wouldn't train me properly. I thought if I could get Ben to fight with us we'd have a chance. That he was our only hope.”

The General closed her eyes at the mention of Ben's name, and her eyelids fluttered a few times as if she was reliving a nightmare.

“You had a vision,” she repeated. “What did you see?”

Rey took a breath. Her body was shaking.

“He was not Kylo Ren. He was Ben Solo. He was holding a blue lightsaber, and we were standing side by side in front of a pit. A void. Darkness.”

The General's eyes opened.

“Darkness?”

“Yes,” Rey said.

“And that's it?”

Rey nodded. She did not dare tell the General the rest.

“He was happy. He was smiling,” Rey said.

That was all she could say.

“There's something I need to show you when we next land,” the General said. She stared through the wall of the _Falcon_ for a minute, then turned to Rey.

“You haven't told me what happened when you confronted my son, which was a very foolish thing to do.”

“I thought I could convince him to come with me,” Rey said. “Instead, he took me straight to Snoke, and Snoke ordered him to kill me.”

“How did you escape?”

Rey could not help smiling faintly.

“Ben killed Snoke instead.”

The General's mouth twitched.

“And then?” she asked.

“Then we fought off the guards, and I begged him to stop the attack on the resistance fleet, but he wouldn't. Instead, he asked me to join him.”

“Oh, Ben,” said the General sadly.

“When I refused him he was angry. I tried to take Luke's saber back from him, and... well...”

Rey pulled out the broken hilt and showed the pieces to the General.

“I think I can fix it,” she said.

“So my son will be the next Supreme Leader,” the General said in disbelief. “And he wants you to be his apprentice.”

Rey did not know what to say. 'Apprentice' was not what she'd been offered. She was conflicted about misleading the General, but too mortified to tell her the whole truth.

“Is he really the Supreme Leader? Was he the next in command?” Rey asked.

“If he wasn't, he will be,” the General said. “He's the only force-user in the First Order, so who will dare defy him?”

Silence. The General stood up and smoothed her robe.

“Thank you for telling me what happened,” she said.

“I'm sorry, General,” Rey said.

“For what?”

“I failed. He was so close to the Light. I could feel it.”

The General patted her arm and said, “My dear, his own family has failed to bring him back many times already. It would be madness to blame yourself. And please call me Leia.”

Rey was relieved to see Leia go. She collapsed back into her seat, and for the first time she noticed BB-8 in the corner.

“Hey, buddy,” she said. “Why are you hiding over there?”

_Leia is sad. Rey is sad. Everybody is sad._

Rey placed a hand on the droid briefly.

“We'll be okay. We've got a resistance to rebuild. We've got to be okay,” she said.

BB-8 whirred away to find Poe, and Rey was alone for a few minutes with her thoughts – thoughts that remained on Kylo Ren.

She had felt him change the moment they stopped to catch their breath after defeating the last guard in the throne room. As they looked around at the burning tapestries and the besieged resistance on the verge of complete annihilation, Rey sensed the sudden, sharp pull of the Dark side. It whispered of the promise of power. Kylo Ren had never been able to control anything in his life, and now that Snoke was gone the First Order was his to seize. The opportunity was irresistible to him.

Leia was wrong. Kylo did not want Rey to be his apprentice and he had no desire to be a Sith Lord. He had no allegiance to the traditions of the Jedi or the Sith, nor to the mission of the First Order, for that matter. The only two things he desired were the power to control his own destiny – and Rey.

The rest of Rey's vision – the one that sent her to Ben – could not be shared with anyone:

_She saw herself standing with Ben in the Light, before a great pit of darkness, into which they hurled their lightsabers. Then, he grabbed her arm and they ran as the void exploded into brilliant streaks of blinding light. As shining stardust fell around them, they stopped, embraced, and smiled at one another. Then, Rey cradled his face and kissed him._

What vision had Ben seen of her, that made him believe she would join him? He'd been so certain that she would accept – and so furiously shattered when she did not.

In any case, Rey was free of their jarring force connections. She spent the next few weeks with the resistance on their new base on Ajan Kloss. It was nice not to worry she might see Kylo Ren around every corner.

The thing Leia wanted to show Rey turned out to be a lightsaber. She took Rey out into the lush forest, away from the eyes of the resistance.

“This was mine. It has been collecting dust for over thirty years, now,” Leia said, pulling the lightsaber from her robe pocket.

The hilt shone brightly even in the filtered light that fell through the high tree canopy above them. It looked pristine, like it had never seen a battle.

“You're a Jedi?!” Rey asked.

Leia smiled and shook her head slightly.

“No. I never completed my training, but I will share what I know of the force with you. And I want you to have this saber. I built it all those years ago, but it was never really meant for me.”

“I can't take this,” Rey said, trying to hand it back, but she could not help admiring it in her hand. “It's beautiful.”

“You must,” Leia said firmly. “At least until you can fix the other one.”

Luke's saber was destroyed, Rey recalled. She would need a weapon, and now that she'd grown used to the feel of a laser sword in her hands she could not be satisfied with a simple staff.

“What did you mean when you said we'll see Luke again?” asked Rey, carefully attaching Leia's saber to her belt.

“Oh, if I know my brother, you'll find out soon enough,” said Leia mysteriously.

Leia recruited Finn, Poe, and Chewie to help her create a training course for Rey, much to Poe's confusion.

“Wait a minute – if Rey can move things with the force, then why can't she do this? Why do you need us?” he asked.

“Because I want her first time through it to be a surprise,” Leia explained slowly, as if talking to a child.

“Right. I guess that makes sense,” Poe muttered.

The group disappeared into the forest, and Rey went back to meditating as she'd been instructed by Leia.

_I see you have not given up._

Rey gasped and opened her eyes to see a shining apparition in front of her face. As she fell heavily back down onto the tree stump over which she'd been gently hovering, the ghost of Luke Skywalker smirked.

“Luke? Are you... are you real?” she asked.

 _Oh, I'm real, but I'm not alive, if that's what you mean,_ Luke said.

“So, you're a ghost?”

 _In a manner of speaking,_ Luke said.

“How is this possible? How did Leia know? She told me you'd be back...” Rey wondered.

_Leia knows me well. I've always wanted this, from the moment I learned it was possible with the force._

“The force? The force can bring you back after death?”

_Look, I'm not back, I'm just... a presence. Only those who are force sensitive can hear me. Only those to whom I choose to appear can see me, and it's not without consequences. Eventually, I won't have the energy to take this form._

“Then don't! Just speak to me.”

Luke shrugged.

_Eh, let me have my fun._

Luke smirked a little, then looked at her with such solemn regard that Rey's eyes teared up. She said what was weighing on the air between them.

“You were right. I couldn't turn him,” she said, ashamed to admit it to Luke.

_No, Rey, you were right. It was right to try. It is what I would have done, if I was in your place._

Rey sniffled loudly and nodded at him in relief. It had taken death to convince Luke Skywalker that Ben Solo might not be a lost cause, but if he believed it now perhaps Rey was not so foolish to hope as well.

_Speaking of my nephew, I think it's time to pay him a visit._

With a small fond smile and a wink, Luke disappeared. Rey sat in shock, unable to continue her meditation, until Leia and the others emerged from the woods again.

“Leia! I just saw – ” Rey said.

“Luke,” Leia said, nodding. “I told you he would be around.”

Rey grinned at the General.

“Is that a force thing?” Poe asked, looking between the two women.

“It must be a force thing,” Finn agreed, looking wistful and somewhat annoyed.

Rey's training with Leia began. She was a far more patient teacher than her brother, and connecting with the force through meditation soon became second nature for Rey. She spent a great deal of time in the woods on the obstacle course with Leia's lightsaber. Every day, Leia would have some part of the course changed to keep Rey on her toes.

The days and weeks passed uneasily on Ajan Kloss. The resistance was gathering new members steadily, but slowly – too slowly. It was only a matter of time before they would be forced to face the First Order again, and the number of viable hiding places had dwindled.

Finn was happier than Rey had ever seen him now that Rose was recovered and he'd become Poe Dameron's co-pilot-in-training. The three of them were always together around the base. Rose and Chewie were using their time to re-haul the Millennium Falcon, which was in a state of sad disrepair after many years of being cobbled back together in a pinch. Occasionally, Rey took a break from training and from scouring the ancient Jedi texts to help them work on the ship.

“Here you go,” said Rey, handing Rose a replacement hose.

Rose was kneeling on the floor with the upper half of her body inside an open maintenance panel.

“Ow! Thanks...” Rose said, when she banged her elbow on the edge of the panel as she pulled her arm back inside.

“Okay, got it,” she said a moment later, sitting back on her heels and wiping her brow. Her hand left a long black smudge of grease on her face.

“How is your training going?” Rose asked.

“Fine,” Rey said. “I feel I'm starting to really understand the force.”

“Did you get Luke's lightsaber working yet?” Rose asked excitedly.

Rose's eager interest in everything Jedi-related reminded Rey of her own excitement to meet the legendary Luke Skywalker not so long ago. She smiled at her friend.

“Not yet, but I think it's going to work,” said Rey.

“Wow. I can't believe I actually know a real Jedi,” said Rose. “It's amazing! You're amazing.”

Rey shook her head.

“I'm just Rey,” she said. “I'm not a Jedi yet.”

“Well, you're the closest thing to one I'll ever see,” Rose said.

Rose leaned back against the wall of the ship and Rey sat down beside her.

“It's a lot of pressure isn't it? Sorry if I'm making it worse,” Rose apologized.

“It's not your fault,” Rey said.

A nagging worry was lingering in Rey's mind. The longer she trained and the more she connected with the force, the more she understood the immense distance between Kylo Ren's skill in the force and her own. Yet, somehow, when she was near him that distance disappeared, and she was able to do things through the force without thinking or understanding how. It was as if he made her stronger.

“You need a teacher,” he had told her. He was right.

Luke had refused to be the teacher she needed. He was afraid of Rey, as he'd been afraid of Ben. Leia was trying to teach her but Leia could only take her so far on the path of a Jedi.

When Rey had been tempted to take Kylo Ren's hand, she had imagined how it would feel to reach her full potential in the force. It felt like it was her destiny.

 _It was a lie_ , she told herself. Kylo Ren wanted to seduce her to the dark side so that he could control her. That was all.

“Rey, you okay?” asked Rose.

“I need to talk to Leia,” Rey said.

She found the General sitting on a log in the middle of the training course.

“Were you waiting for me?” Rey asked.

“Oh, I was just... remembering what it was like to train with Luke,” Leia responded, smiling faintly.

“Why didn't you complete your training?” Rey asked, hoping she was not overstepping their relationship.

Leia was quiet for a minute. When she spoke, her eyes remained far away.

“I had a vision. It convinced me that if I became a Jedi, my son would turn to the dark side and ultimately die at my hand,” she said.

Rey frowned, but did not say anything.

“I could not bear that. I thought, maybe I could save him, and if I failed, then at least I wouldn't be the one to strike him down,” Leia said after a while.

She put her hand over Rey's.

“I am sorry that now it falls to you to face him,” Leia said.

Rey stared at the General's hand. It trembled over her own.

“Ben still loves you,” Rey said. “I know he does. I – I've felt it.”

“You felt it. How? When?”

The General was concerned but Rey also sensed the hope in her voice.

“When I was with Luke, there were moments of – of connection. Where I could speak to Ben. See him. It was like he was standing right in front of me, and he could see me, too.”

Leia's hand tightened on Rey's.

“He was seeking you out,” she said. “An enormous risk to use the force in such a manner. He must be growing more powerful than I realized. He's gone deeper into the dark side of the force.”

Rey frowned as Leia fought to remain composed at the thought.

“No, I don't think so,” Rey said. “He didn't understand it either – why or how the force was connecting us. When we talked I could feel the conflict in him. He wanted to ask about you.”

Leia did not speak. She got up and paced a few feet away, staring into the forest. Finally, she looked back at Rey.

“Be careful, Rey. The Dark side of the force is dishonest. Have you seen him again? Recently?”

Rey shook her head.

“Good,” said Leia.


	2. The Way of Skywalker

Rey grew restless. It began to take a toll on her ability to remain centered in the force.

On one particularly frustrating day in the forest, after hitting her head a few times as she attempted to complete the training course blindfolded, Rey lost her composure and slashed through a few trees with her saber before ripping off her blindfold and screaming into the humid air.

_Are you done?_

Rey spun around to face Luke's ghost.

“Where have you been all this time? It's been months,” she said grumpily.

_Here and there. Observing what I can. Time is a tricky thing to grasp when you only exist in the force. It's taxing, you know.  
_

“No, I don't know,” Rey said. “Have you gone to see Kylo Ren?”

“I have,” Luke said.

“And?”

Luke pursed his lips.

_He ignored me_ .

Rey cleared her throat. Her earlier anger quickly receded into the background of her mind.

“What is he doing? Has he become the Supreme Leader?”

_He has._

Rey force-flung the rock she'd begun levitating. It went twirling into a nearby bush.

“Oh.”

_He doesn't seem to be enjoying it, though,_ Luke said. 

“Why do you say that?”

_It would seem many in the First Order do not support his leadership, and do not believe that you killed Snoke. They don't dare question him to his face, but he knows what the rumors are about._

“And what are they about?”

_That he has questionable loyalties due to his family's involvement in the resistance. If he did not have the force, he'd have already been removed from power._

Luke's ghost flickered away, then appeared sitting on a tree branch above Rey.

_The afterlife is enlightening._

“What else did you see?” Rey asked.

_The First Order is not as strong as they'd like us to believe. They rebuilt the Supremacy from the salvaged pieces, which took resources and manpower from their farther reaches in the galaxy. There are more defectors each day. Now that Snoke is gone there is space for the Light to break through to people._

“Not to Kylo Ren,” Rey said.

She felt her whole chest ache with the sorrow of losing Ben.

“How did the darkness ever get such a hold on him?” she asked, not expecting an answer.

She looked up and saw that Luke was gone. The effort of spying on Kylo and the First Order must have exhausted his energy. Rey relayed Luke's observations to Leia.

“Thank you. This is good news. We have more time than we thought to regroup and plan our next move.”

Leia stopped speaking abruptly and lifted her hand to her mouth, pressing shaking fingers over her lips.

“What is it?” Rey asked, reaching out in the force to see what Leia might be sensing, but there was nothing.

After a long moment, a tear slid down Leia's cheek.

“I just want my son back. I don't want to fight him. Perhaps it is time for me to step down,” Leia said.

“No,” Rey said. “The resistance needs you. They'll lose hope without your leadership.”

“Hope does not lie within one person, Rey.”

Leia turned away, and for the first time Rey saw her shoulders slump a bit as she walked, but only until someone called her name. At the sound, Leia straightened up into her usual strong posture, somehow projecting a height and weight far beyond that of her petite frame.

Luke was not seen or heard from again, but Rey sensed he was still around, guiding her through the ancient texts. Often times, she would find a book moved from the shelf and opened to a specific page, waiting for her.

It was during one of her late night study sessions that it first happened – she felt _him_ watching. Rey pretended not to notice. He did not speak, and for a few minutes Rey sat trying to breathe normally, still bent over the text. Finally, she turned her head to glance over her shoulder. She only managed to catch a glimpse of his dark figure out of the corner of her eye, and then he was gone. Immediately angry, Rey jumped to her feet and stared at the spot where he'd been. Had he discovered how to control the force bond?

Rey stood with her hands on her hips and tried to calm her emotions. _Focus_ , she thought. _Reach out. Use the force to find him._

She closed her eyes and slowed her breathing. Nothing happened. After a few more minutes of trying, Rey gave up and went back to reading. The next evening she waited on edge, but Kylo Ren did not appear. She attempted to reach out to him again to no avail.

A few mornings later, during her first meditation of the day, Rey felt the force bond connect them again. She snapped her eyes open.

Kylo Ren was standing in front of her with his hands folded. Rey stared back for a minute, unwilling to be the first to speak. She did not know what to say, so after a few more minutes of silence, she closed her eyes again. When she felt him go, she burst into tears.

Days later, the bond opened during one of her runs through the training course. She was blindfolded but she knew the exact moment he was there with her. Rey continued her run, and he watched until she stopped at the edge of the gorge. Her mind was not focused enough to make it across.

She removed the blindfold and looked back at him.

“What do you want?!” she cried in irritation.

“Who is training you? Luke?” he asked.

“Luke is dead! Remember?”

He fell silent and Rey thought he looked somewhat remorseful.

“If he's appeared to me, then certainly he's appeared to you,” he said.

Rey glared at him.

“It's your fault he's dead!”

He blinked slowly at her and sucked in the corners of his mouth. Rey was certain there was something like regret in his eyes.

“He'd have killed me years ago if he wasn't afraid of hurting my mother,” he finally said stiffly.

“That's not true, Ben,” Rey said, which seemed to annoy him.

“Oh, it's true. Even in his great wisdom in the endless beyond of the force, he probably still thinks...”

Kylo stopped speaking and stared at her.

“Thinks what?”

“That I killed his students,” he said.

With that, he disappeared, leaving Rey to gape at the empty forest. She screamed at the spot where he'd been and some kind of flying wildlife flitted away through the trees in terror.

That night, determined to figure out how to reach him, she sat meditating for hours. When he appeared she jumped and opened her eyes.

“Are you doing this or did I?” she asked.

“Were you trying to?” was all he said.

She crossed her arms.

“It was me,” he said, looking almost smug. “I could teach you how it works.”

Rey folded her arms tighter against her chest.

“Fine. How does it work?”

“Join me and I'll tell you,” he said, lifting his hand toward her.

Rey glared at him until it fell back to his side.

“Who is training you?” he asked. “Luke can't be around that much. Not with as much as he's here haunting me.”

Rey could not help smirking at the thought.

“As he should,” she said.

Kylo shrugged one shoulder at a time uncomfortably and Rey let the silence sit between them.

“Leia is training me,” she finally said.

She may as well have driven a blade into him. Tears welled in her eyes as she felt shock reverberate between them. Then, he disappeared.

“Ben,” she whispered.

A few days later, she heard him before she saw him in the woods.

“My mother is not a Jedi. How is she training you?”

Rey turned her head and saw him standing stiffly behind her. She wiped the sweat off her brow.

“No, she's not a Jedi. She gave up on her training because of you,” she said.

“Because of me?”

He was skeptical and angry, scowling at Rey.

“She had a vision. She believed if she did become a Jedi she would have to fight you,” Rey said.

He took in the information stoically.

“That's what she told you. Maybe it's true. Doesn't matter. So, now she's training you to do what she cannot.”

Rey stared at him with tears in her eyes.

“Please don't make me fight you, Ben,” she begged.

“Is that what you think is happening? No. I don't want to fight you.”

Rey stared at him.

“Then what do you want?” she asked, but she knew.

He held out his hand to her again. Rey slowly shook her head.

“You're unable to let go of the past, Rey. Be careful. That's a path straight to the Dark side.”

“You would know.”

“Yes. I would.”

He looked at her inscrutably for a moment, then disappeared.

Rey did not tell anyone about the force bond. She did not tell Leia that she'd spoken to Kylo Ren. Rey could not bear to get Leia's hopes up only to fail again, and she refused to get her own hopes up. It was Kylo, not Ben, reaching out to her, hoping to steal her away from the resistance.

Finn, Poe, and Rose were given a scouting mission and left Ajan Kloss on the _Falcon_. Rey keenly felt the loss of her friends and the ship she now thought of as home. It became even more difficult to focus on her training.

“Leia?”

Rey managed to catch the General alone early one morning, sitting outside with a steaming mug in her hands.

“What do you think of Poe Dameron?” Leia asked as Rey joined her.

“I haven't known him very long,” Rey said.

“Long enough to have an opinion,” Leia said.

“I... think he's our best pilot. He'll never give up on the resistance. He's loyal. And he's very protective of BB-8.”

“And yet, he left BB-8 with you while he's gone,” Leia observed.

“Yes, he did,” Rey said, wondering why Leia was questioning her about Poe.

“Are you going out to meditate this morning?” Leia asked.

Rey sighed.

“I am.”

“You don't sound happy about it,” Leia said.

“I've been distracted by my thoughts lately,” Rey admitted.

“What's on your mind?”

Rey rested her chin on her hands.

“Luke saw darkness in me. He was afraid to train me, Leia. What if this is a mistake? It is so difficult for me to put aside my emotions. I am angry every day, no matter how long I meditate.”

Leia took in her confession and sipped from her mug.

“You remind me of myself during my own training,” Leia said. “The way of the Jedi did not come as easily to me as it did to my brother. I've always been the one with the temper. Luke was more easygoing by nature. Calm was a part of him from birth, but not me.”

Rey stared at the woman beside her, the poised and stately General, and marveled at her words.

“But you don't show it,” she said.

“And neither will you, with enough practice,” Leia said.

“What if I fail? What if the darkness takes over?”

“Is this your greatest fear?” Leia asked.

Rey pressed her forehead into her palms.

“Yes.”

“Then you must face it.”

“How?” Rey asked.

Leia stared into her mug.

“Go meditate and let the force guide you to the answer,” was all she said. That was not the answer Rey wanted to hear, but she nodded and left for her usual meditation spot in the woods.

As always, she struggled to quiet her mind and reach out to the force. However, Leia's calm confidence in her that morning gave Rey the motivation to let go of her doubts and keep trying. Just as she felt the force envelop her, a vision burst into her mind.

_She saw the throne room of the Supreme Leader, dimly lit, with the throne hidden in shadows. It seemed there was no air in the room. She held her breath. Movement caught her eye at the base of the throne, and she saw the shift of boot-clad legs - four legs entwined. Her eyes began to separate the black-clad figures on the throne from the shadows._ _Kylo Ren was sprawled in the seat of the throne, and Rey was sitting half on his lap, leaning into his chest, cradling his face with a black-gloved hand, kissing his lips._

Rey's shock ripped her from the vision and her meditative state abruptly. She sat gasping in the misty morning air, her eyes wide open.

“No,” she said. “No!”

The anger returned, and the fear that she was not in control of her fate welled up in her chest.

“I will never choose Kylo Ren!” she whispered viciously. “Never!”

She sniffed and quelled her tears, then closed her eyes and slowed her breathing once again.

_Show me the way forward,_ she begged. _I choose to remain in the Light. I reject the hand of Kylo Ren. I seek balance. Show me the way._

She continued to meditate and repeat, _Show me the way_ , until she was interrupted yet again by the very person she was trying to put out of her thoughts.

“What do you want, now?” she asked.

He did not answer, so she opened her eyes. Kylo Ren was offering her his hand. Again.

With a feral scream, all of her anger burst forth, and she jumped at him, igniting her lightsaber in one swift movement. Rey enjoyed the look of surprise on his face as he leapt backwards and lifted his own lightsaber in response.

They stared at one another, weapons aloft, for a few seconds, then Rey screamed again and swung her saber. They sparred frantically through the forest, until his red crackling blade sliced into a tree, sending splintery fragments of ancient bark and trunk flying through the air.

“STOP!” he shouted through their crossed sabers. “LOOK!”

He grimaced and reached up with his free hand to yank a large splinter from his collar, where it had lodged and scratched his neck. A thin line of blood appeared there as he held the sharp bit of wood in his hand, staring at it. He turned off his lightsaber and slid away from her before she could take another swing at him.

“How is this possible?” he asked.

Rey stared at his hand as he turned the wood scrap in his fingers. Her anger had faded some time ago during their fight.

“You're in a forest,” he said. “I felt my saber hit what must have been a tree, and the pieces are here... on the floor, in my skin. The bond reaches farther than just me and you.”

A sense of foreboding hit Rey and she took a few steps away from him, until her back was against another tree. His eyes moved from his hand to her face, still full of amazement. The tiny scratches on his face were beaded with blood. Rey wiped her own cheek, which was stinging gently, and came away with her own blood on her hand.

“This is unprecedented,” he said. “Do you know that?”

Rey could not speak.

“I wonder – if you took my hand, could you be transported here as well?” he asked, holding up the wooden shard again.

“I will not take your hand!” Rey spit out.

He looked as if he would reply, but then he was gone.


	3. An Unexpected Mission

Finn, Poe, and Rose returned with news of resistance-friendly radicals and a storage hold full of provisions and fuel. Finn hugged Rey tightly as soon as he saw her.

“I've been worried about you,” he said.

“Worried about me? Why?” she asked.

“I just am,” he said. “There's something I want to talk to you about later, okay?”

“Uh, sure,” Rey said.

“Great,” he said, squeezing her tightly again.

Rey resisted the urge to squirm away. Embraces were still a foreign language to her. She found them uncomfortable even though she recognized the sentiment and sense of belonging they conveyed. Physical affection was something that seemed meant for other people, as she'd learned growing up alone on Jakku. It was surprising that Finn, a child stolen and made a soldier for the First Order, was naturally so affectionate. No wonder the First Order had not been able to successfully program him into obedience. His heart was too warm for it.

Rose delivered a crushing hug to Rey as well. She seemed to see in Rey something of the sister she'd lost. Rey was grateful for a friend who was content to work together on something mechanical for hours. When Rose was focused on a task, her usual energetic conversation turned to quiet, efficient focus. It was good to have Rose back on Ajan Kloss.

Thankfully, all Poe expected from Rey was a brief clap on the shoulder before he asked about BB-8.

“He's around here somewhere,” Rey said.

As if on cue, BB-8 rolled out from behind a stack of storage crates, going off happily about how much he'd missed Poe.

“Aw, I missed you too, buddy,” said Poe. “Why – why are you so filthy?”

Excitedly, BB-8 explained that he'd been helping Rey train in the forest.

“Are you sure it wasn't in a mud pit?” Poe asked.

“It's been raining,” Rey said defensively.

“You couldn't clean him up a bit?” Poe asked, and though he was still smiling, Rey sensed he was displeased.

“So he can just get dirty again the next minute?” Rey asked.

Thankfully, Leia interrupted them.

“I hate to say it, but I have another job for you already,” she said to Poe.

This was news to Rey, and she looked at Leia just as expectantly as the rest of the group.

“Oh, really? What is it?” he asked.

“I need you to deliver a message to an old friend,” she said. “I think he might be able to help us.”

“Is he with the resistance?” asked Finn.

“Not exactly,” said Leia.

“Is he an outlaw?” asked Poe. “A smuggler?”

Leia just smiled briefly and handed Poe a small storage box.

“Go to Pasaana and deliver this to Lando Calrissian. You'll have to leave tonight if you want to be sure of finding him.”

Poe's expression showed that he realized the significance of Leia's request. His usual swagger disappeared and his face grew serious.

“Where will he be?” asked Poe.

“Take Threepio with you and go to The Festival of the Ancestors. I have a contact there who will take you to Lando.”

“And if we run into the First Order?” asked Poe.

“Keep your heads down – and covered,” said Leia. “There shouldn't be much of a presence on Pasaana, but be careful. Now is not the time to draw attention to the resistance.”

With a larger crew than usual, the _Falcon_ prepared to leave late that evening. Rey would join them this time. She needed to get off of Ajan Kloss and do something besides meditate in the woods.

After dinner, Finn tried to get Rey alone.

“Rey, didn't you say you had something to show me?” he said pointedly, after clearing his plate.

“Oh, right. Yes. Let's go, ah, look at it,” she said.

“What are you going to look at?” asked Rose, walking up to the table.

“Nothing,” said Finn quickly. “I mean, I don't know. Rey hasn't told me.”

“Ohh, secrets,” Rose said, peering at them with a curious grin.

“Who's got a secret?” asked Poe, overhearing them.

“Nobody,” Finn said.

“That wasn't very convincing. What are you and Rey being secretive about?” asked Poe, grinning.

“There's no secret!” Rey protested. “I was going to show Finn Luke's lightsaber. I've managed to fix it.”

“Oh my god! Can I see it?” Rose said immediately.

“Yeah, why were you only going to show Finn?” asked Poe.

“You know what? I'll bring it with me,” Rey said. “Then everyone can see it.”

She left the group and went to her quarters to pack her things, including Luke's saber. Rey was anxious to get back to the _Falcon_ and for the mission to be underway.

Finn and Poe were already in the cockpit when Rey returned. Rose and Chewbacca were still messing with some wiring in the back of the ship.

C-3PO greeted Rey first.

“I'm so glad you are coming with us, Rey of Jakku. I shall feel much safer with a Jedi along,” he said.

“I'm not a Jedi,” Rey said.

“Oh – ” said C-3PO uncertainly.

“But I do have a lightsaber,” she said.

“That is a comfort, to be sure,” C-3PO said.

BB-8 told Rey that C-3PO was scared of everything and not to listen to him.

“I beg your pardon! I am not frightened! I am realistic,” replied C-3PO.

Rey went to secure her bag of belongings in a back corner of the ship. Rose and Chewie nearly ran into her as she walked back out of the small chamber. They all sat down together for a moment in the main cabin.

“So... is that it?” Rose asked, nodding toward the lightsaber on Rey's belt.

“Oh! Yes,” Rey said.

She lifted the saber and ignited it. Chewie warned her to be careful as she twirled it a few times in the small cabin.

In no time, they arrived at Pasaana. C-3PO spent most of the journey explaining the cultural significance of the festival they would be joining on the ground, and then began to repeat the information for Poe and Finn once they landed.

“Yeah, okay, got it. That's great, C-3PO,” Poe interrupted, as he led them toward the top of a dune that overlooked the festival.

“All right, cloaks on. Even you, Threepio. BB-8, stay between us, don't go running off.”

BB-8 grumbled, but slipped behind Rey and Finn. Chewbacca stayed with the ship in case they needed to make a quick getaway.

The festival below was a mass of brightly-colored tents, flags, and silks waving in the breeze over masses of Pasaana's inhabitants, who also wore bright colors and contrasting headscarves to ward off the sun and sand. Jubilant music over the beating of drums grew louder as they made their descent.

Rey marveled at the scene as they joined the revelers. Never would she have imagined that anybody living on a desert planet could find such joy. Her years on Jakku taught her that the desert was lonely, harsh, and difficult, always too hot or too cold for comfort, a junkyard wasteland where nobody chose to live if they could help it.

Suddenly, _he_ was with her.

“Where are you?” he asked.

Rey did not respond. She kept her gaze straight ahead and continued walking with the others.

“Oh, you're not alone. I see.”

He watched her for a moment.

“You're in a desert. I can see the sand on your cloak.”

Rey glanced at him, hoping her scowl would silence him.

“Did my mother give you a mission? The resistance has been quiet. Scattered and licking its wounds. Tell her to disband what's left and disappear. The First Order will forget she exists.”

Rey had fallen to the back of the group, and no one heard her mutter, “That doesn't sound like them.”

“The First Order will be whatever I want it to be,” he said.

“Sure about that, are you?” Rey countered.

Suddenly, he stepped in front of her and held his hand up as if to use the force to stop her in her tracks, but he did not do it. Rey glared up at him.

“Join me, and we will make the rules. No more First Order. No more war. We can bring peace to the galaxy,” he said.

“No,” she breathed, her temper rising.

“Rey? What's wrong?”

Finn was standing behind Kylo Ren. Rey saw his concerned face appear over Kylo's shoulder before he ended the force bond and disappeared. Finn stepped into the space where Kylo had just been.

“Rey?”

“I'm fine. I – ah – just got sand in my eyes,” she said.

They cut a path through the heart of the festival, then slowly walked the perimeter. Halfway around the crowd, a small figure in a yellow headscarf approached them.

“It's not every day one sees such a droid on Pasaana. What brings you here, travelers?” the woman said, pulling her scarf aside briefly to reveal a pin bearing the emblem of the resistance.

“Just looking for an old friend,” Poe said.

The woman nodded and whispered, “Follow me. Keep the droid covered. There are eyes in this crowd.”

She led them on a winding path through the tents bordering the festival, over a rocky clearing, and behind a few abandoned structures that might have once been fuel stations. A small ship was parked between them, looking like it had not flown in decades. The woman knocked on the door, and a tall man with short curly hair opened it. He was wearing a cape over a fitted robe.

“What have you brought to my doorstep?” he asked suspiciously. “Who are you people?”

Poe pulled the hood off of C3PO's head and Lando's eyes widened.

“Put that back on and get inside!” he said.

The woman slipped away as the group entered the ship.

“Now, I know the droid. Who are the rest of you?” Lando asked.

“We're with the resistance. General Organa sent us to give you this,” Poe said.

Lando took the box from him and said, “All of you to deliver this?”

Poe shrugged.

“I know what Leia wants,” Lando said.

He opened the box. Inside was a letter and something else that rattled around. They watched as he unfolded the paper and read it silently, smiling a few times to himself.

“Oh, my Princess,” he said reverently. “She knows how to cut straight to the heart.”

An alarm began to beep inside the cabin. Lando nearly dropped the box. He quickly shoved the letter back inside.

“Oh no,” he said, peering at one of the screens in his tiny cockpit. “It's time to get out of here. I assume you came in on a ship? Someone get up here and direct me to it!”

He hopped into the pilot's seat and slowly backed out of the alley. Two stormtroopers came around the corner with blasters raised and began firing at them.

“There will be more where they came from,” Lando said. “Hang on, everybody.”

They rose and sped out of the alley, knocking crumbling building away as they did. Finn grabbed his blaster and flung open the top hatch of the ship, as if he already knew about the three stormtroopers on speeders that appeared from behind an unassuming tent and gave chase. He took out the first two easily enough, but the third continued to pursue them.

“We can't let them see the _Falcon_!” Rey said.

“The _Falcon!_ ” repeated Lando in surprise. “No, we can't let them see her!”

He turned suddenly and headed toward a rocky mass of dunes.

“Tell your friend to hurry up and pick off the last one,” he said.

A triumphant shout from Finn confirmed that he had done just that.

“We're clear. Turn right. We're behind that dune,” said Poe.

“You couldn't have brought a less conspicuous ship?” Lando asked.

They made a long loop to the _Falcon_ , slipping behind hills and dunes wherever they could.

“Are you coming with us?” Rey asked Lando as they came to a sudden halt by the _Falcon_.

“Of course I'm coming with you,” he said. “I can't stay here, thanks to you.”

They made a run for the lowered ramps of the _Falcon_. Chewie was ready and waiting to rush them off the planet.


	4. Another Offer

Rey did not sleep that night on Ajan Kloss. Instead, she went into the woods and sat in her meditation spot for hours, staring into the darkness. Finn found her there as the sun came up.

“Rey?”

She blinked tiredly, and turned her eyes toward him.

“Finn?”

“Have you been out here all night?” he asked.

Rey closed her eyes.

“I couldn't sleep,” she said.

“Why?” Finn asked.

“I don't know.”

Finn stared at her with deep concern on his face.

“I guess this isn't a good time to talk,” he said.

“No,” Rey said.

Finn nodded and said, “What can I do to help?”

Rey just shook her head.

“Nothing. I'll see you at breakfast.”

Finn left her reluctantly.

Rey wanted to scream to the trees about the unfairness of having a force bond with her enemy – a connection she could not control. She hated being at his mercy. If he was right about the bond, he could appear at any time and kidnap her from where she stood, and yet Kylo Ren still hoped she would accept his offer willingly.

Rey did not know if Kylo truly wanted peace, but she could see that he was as loathe to continue fighting his mother as Leia was to end her own son. Ben Solo had not yet been completely consumed by the dark side. Was there enough of him left to save?

 _Ben **,**_ Rey thought, her eyes tightly closed.

The cold morning air stung her lungs as she took deeper breaths. She reached out, as she had for weeks in her attempts to connect with Kylo Ren. This time she reached for Ben, her mind seeking the dark, conflicted eyes she'd once gazed into as he delivered her to Snoke.

Suddenly, her consciousness was tugged forward. She opened her eyes to the sensation of an abrupt landing, and saw him. Kylo Ren was lying down, presumably in bed, staring at the ceiling. Slowly, he turned his head to look at her.

“So you figured it out,” he said.

Rey was so shocked by her success that she could not respond.

“You look terrible,” he said.

“I look better than you,” she replied.

It was true. He looked ill and appeared to be just as tired as she felt. He sat up.

“Have you come to join me?” he asked, holding out his bare hand to her for the first time since the night in the hut on the island.

“No,” Rey whispered, shaking her head.

He stood up, inches from where she sat cross-legged. His hand dropped to his side and he watched tears fall down her cheeks. Slowly, as if approaching a wild animal, he lifted his other hand toward her.

Rey's ragged breathing slowed, seemingly outside of her own control. His chest rose and fell with hers. The back of his hand made gentle contact with her wet face. She let out a sob and closed her eyes tightly, ending the force connection.

Rey's body shivered in the cold forest. A drizzling rain began to fall as she picked herself up and went to find her friends.

Finn stared at her as they ate. Poe, who was not a morning person, did not seem to notice Rey's disheveled state or Finn's concern.

“So who is Lando Calrissian?” Rose asked. “Why did the General send us to him?”

“He was a general in the Rebel Alliance,” said Poe. “I thought everybody knew that.”

Rey, who had not known that, shared a look with Rose.

“I thought he must have been a friend of Han Solo,” she said.

“Well, yeah, he was,” said Poe.

“Does... does he _know_?” asked Rose suddenly.

They all stopped and looked dismally at each other.

“Maybe that's what was in the letter,” Finn said.

Later, when Rey went to retrieve her bag from the _Falcon_ , Finn followed her inside.

“You okay?” he asked.

Rey nodded.

“I'll be fine once I've gotten some sleep,” she said.

“Good,” Finn said. “Ah, Rey? Before you go, there's something I wanted to tell you.”

Rey sensed the nervousness in his voice and froze, staring at him.

“Finn...” she said, wishing she had more energy for the conversation they were about to have.

He grabbed her hands and led her to sit next to him on the cabin's bench.

“I can't believe I'm about to say this,” he said with a smile.

“Please, don't... don't say it,” Rey said.

Finn was crestfallen. Rey screwed her eyes shut.

“I'm sorry. I just – I don't want to hurt your feelings. You're my friend, Finn.”

She looked at him miserably.

“That's what we are, right? Friends?” she asked. “Just friends?”

Finn frowned and seemed unable to comprehend her for a moment. Then, he said, “Oh!”

Rey nodded, hoping the conversation had been successfully avoided.

“You think I'm talking about... us? Being more than friends?” he asked.

“Wh – well, aren't you?”

He laughed.

“No! I'm trying to tell you that I'm force sensitive, and I want you to train me.”

Rey stared at her friend, then patted his hand.

“Oh, I'm so glad,” she said.

They both laughed again.

“How did you realize you've been sensing the force?” Rey asked.

“I just get these – feelings. I know things I shouldn't know – like, I really know them deep in my soul. I can sense you sometimes, when you're in danger, or when you're upset.”

Rey nodded uncomfortably.

“When I held that lightsaber for the first time, I _felt_ it, Rey. It wasn't like holding any other weapon. It was a connection.”

Rey nodded again.

“So, will you train me?” he asked.

This time Rey shook her head.

“I can't, Finn. It can't be me.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but said nothing.

“It should be Leia. We'll ask her to train you,” Rey said.

There was a clanging commotion as someone entered the ship and dropped what sounded like a box full of metal scraps on the floor.

“Hello? Anybody in here? Finn?” came Poe's voice.

“We're in here,” Rey called.

“Ah, there you are,” Poe said, coming into the cabin. “Finn, I've devised a game for us. You're gonna love it.”

“What kind of game?” Finn asked.

“It involves me flying and you shooting things,” Poe said, grinning.

“I love it already,” Finn said.

“Well, I'm going to bed,” Rey said. “You two have fun.”

Rey managed to successfully meditate and was finally able to sleep afterward. When she woke, her mind was calm, and her thoughts were collected for the first time since beginning her training. Ben was alive. Kylo Ren was losing his power over Ben Solo and over the First Order.

She returned to the woods the next morning and willed the force to show her the way forward. She would not make the same mistake again. If there was a chance to get Ben back, it must be at the right moment.

No visions came to her, but Rey was not deterred. She was beginning to think it was pointless to act based on visions anyway.

 _He_ appeared as she was running through the forest, floating along in the force for the easy joy of it. She ignored him until she completed her lap.

“I've ordered them to stop searching for the resistance,” he said.

Rey bent over, catching her breath.

“And the campaign to conquer the free systems?” she asked.

He pressed his lips together.

“There can be no peace until all are united under the Order,” he said.

Rey scoffed.

“I don't like your idea of peace,” she said.

“What do you know about it? You haven't known peace for one moment in your life,” he said.

Rey glared and said, “Neither have you.”

He offered her his hand, as always.

“Join me, Rey,” he said.

“No. You join me,” she said, the words tumbling from her mouth before they were thoughts.

He lowered his hand.

“I can't. But you still have a choice,” he said.

“So do you, Ben!”

His eyes became cold and his face wooden.

“Ben Solo is dead,” he said.

Then he was gone. Rey cursed. It had not been the right moment. The force had not been with her, it seemed. For the rest of the week, Kylo Ren appeared to her each day, only long enough to silently offer his hand. Then, he stopped.

Rey was tasked with traveling alongside Lando to recruit more help for the resistance. This time, Rose and Finn stayed behind on the base at the request of Leia. Poe did not appreciate losing his best mate and was moody as they got underway.

They had three stops to make at remote outposts, where Leia was certain there were still old fighters hanging around, living simple lives in hiding, hoping to get by unnoticed by the First Order. All went smoothly until their last stop, a small moon heavily forested with thick, deep purple trees and vegetation.

“Welcome to Greth,” said Poe. “Looks humid down there.”

It was. They were all sweating within minutes of stepping outside the _Falcon_ , which Poe landed neatly between the trees, out of sight of the villages dotting the hills.

“Who are we looking for?” Rey asked.

“Brand Tenard and Masi Holk,” said Poe.

Lando nodded.

“They'll be hard to find,” he said.

“Let's see where we're going,” Poe said, flipping open his notepad.

“Ah... we're looking for a brothel,” he said.

Rey raised her eyebrows, but refrained from commenting. They headed out into the darkness. It was not as difficult to find the brothel as it was to find the entrance. Once they did, the man at the door refused to let Chewie inside. Thankfully, he did not understand Wookiee, because Chewie called him a number of rude words as he watched his friends file inside.

“Will Chewie be okay out there?” Rey asked Poe.

“He's a Wookiee, he can take care of himself,” Poe said. “Let's do this quickly, though.”

“Let me do the talking, and try not to look so uptight,” Lando whispered.

“Maybe I should stay outside with Chewie,” Rey said.

“No,” Poe replied impatiently. “We need to show them a Jedi.”

“Fine,” Rey said, reluctantly following him.

Within minutes, Lando had bribed his way to a back room. The sense of foreboding Rey felt grew stronger.

“I don't like this,” she whispered to Poe.

They were ushered into the room and the door was shut firmly behind them.

“Lando? Lando Calrissian?” said a gravely voice.

A tall, long-limbed creature rose from chair by a large, sleek black fireplace. He had yellow skin, slitted eyes, and a long, thin face. He walked with a limp and leaned on a cane.

“It's me, Tenard,” Lando said.

They shook hands.

“And you've brought friends?” asked Tenard.

“A few,” said Lando. “Where is Masi?”

“Oh, Masi. She left me years ago,” said Tenard.

“I'm sorry to hear that,” said Lando.

“Eh, I'm over it,” Tenard said. “So, what brings you here?”

“I wanted to give you this, and ask you to consider re-joining the resistance. General Organa sends her regards and thanks for your previous service.”

Tenard peered at Rey and Poe.

“I suppose you two are pilots?”

“I'm the pilot. Poe Dameron,” said Poe, shaking his hand.

“I'm Rey,” she said.

“She's our Jedi,” said Poe, smirking.

“A Jedi, huh? I heard they were all dead,” said Tenard.

At that moment, a Wookiee scream could be heard faintly through the door.

“Chewie!” Rey said, her lightsaber ignited in her hands without a second thought.

She burst through the door, to the terrified screams of the patrons in the main room, and ran outside to follow Chewie's shouting to a nearby alley. He was fighting off five assailants, a few of which had blades out.

“Hey! You might want to rethink this fight!” Rey shouted at them, startling one long enough for Chewie to knock him out.

Rey leapt into the fray and managed to take out the first two who came at her within seconds. The fight did not last long, and just as she kicked the last assailant off of her saber, _he_ appeared.

Reflexively, Kylo met her blade with his own. A soon as their lightsabers touched, Chewie screamed in surprise, _Murderer!_

“This is not a good time!” Rey said through gritted teeth, shoving his blade away with all her might.

Chewie made a garbled sound of confusion. Rey looked at Kylo, who had retreated a few steps and was standing with his saber in the air, peering at her as if trying to discern her surroundings.

_Where did he go? What just happened?_

“It's okay, Chewie. There's nobody here,” she said, turning to head to give him a reassuring look.

Kylo looked in the direction of her gaze, and for a moment it seemed he might cry. Then, he was gone. Chewie held his head in his hands and shook it back and forth, saying it was time to go.

“You're right, Chewie. Let's get out of here,” she said.

Poe and Lando were looking for them out on the main street.

“What happened?” asked Poe.

 _They don't like Wookiees here_ , Chewie said.

“Tenard said there's a few gangs that terrorize this moon,” said Poe.

“Well, one of them is now five members short,” said Rey.

“Let's go before more show up,” said Lando.

They slipped off the main streets and retraced their path back to the _Falcon._

 _I don't like this place_ , said Chewbacca.

“Me either,” said Rey.

_I need a drink._

“Me too,” said Rey.

Kylo was back the next morning, jolting Rey awake with the sudden sensation of the force bond opening.

“Just put your hand down, I'll not join you,” she said, with her eyes still closed.

“What happened with the Wookiee?” he asked.

Rey opened her eyes.

“He saw you,” Rey said. “When our lightsabers touched.”

He pondered the information with lowered eyes and a furrowed brow.

“I know the reason for the force bond,” he said, still looking at the ground.

“Snoke said it was him,” Rey said.

“Snoke lied,” he said. “He sensed the truth and initiated the first connections, but this is something more. Something beyond even his abilities.”

“What?”

“We're a force dyad,” he said.

He looked up at her through his hair, as if he was ashamed to say it.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“It means two that are one,” he said.

Rey sat up and crossed her arms.

“Oh, really? So, next I suppose you're going to say we're destined to rule together?” she asked.

“No. It's not a destiny, just a fact. We're stronger together.”

He held out his hand.

“No,” Rey said.


	5. The Spy

After the dyad revelation, Kylo stopped using the force connection, and Rey was unable to find him through it. She worried what it meant.

Later that month, Leia revealed that the resistance was in communication with a spy in the First Order. Finn was certain it must be a stormtrooper who chose to spy rather than defect. The resistance was slowly gathering more former stormtroopers, and each one was a personal victory for Finn.

“I wonder if I know him,” Finn mused.

“Maybe it's not a him,” Poe said.

“Maybe,” Finn said.

Rose sat down with them and stared blandly at her tray of food. She had not been her usual talkative self for over a week. After Finn and Poe left, Rey nudged Rose's arm.

“Are you okay?”

“Oh. Yeah. I mean... no, not really. Do I look upset? I'm sorry,” she said. “I don't mean to.”

“You don't have to apologize. What's wrong?” Rey asked.

“Oh, well, it's a few things. My – my sister's died a year ago. That's a big one. And Finn.”

“Finn?”

“Oh, right, you don't know. I, ah, kissed Finn that day on Crait. I thought I was dying, so I figured, why not?”

Rose sighed.

“It made things weird. I think he's afraid of me now.”

“You should talk to him,” Rey said.

“Oh, I know. I will. Soon.”

“Do you want me to talk to him?” Rey asked.

“Oh, no! I'll do it myself.”

Rose sighed again and picked up her fork.

“I'm sorry about your sister,” Rey said.

Hesitantly, Rey reached around Rose to give her a hug. Rose sniffed, then smiled and hugged her back. That night, for the first time in weeks, Rey was visited again by Kylo Ren as she sat on her bed searching the ancient texts for any mention of the force dyad.

“Do you know what this is?” he asked.

He held up a pyramid-shaped object.

“Is that why you haven't been here offering me your hand every day?” she asked.

“It's a holocron,” he said. “The last one in existence.”

“Okay,” she said.

“It will lead us to Exogol,” he said.

“I'm not going anywhere with you,” Rey said flatly.

“Rey. I need you to come with me,” he said.

Something about the way he pleaded made Rey hesitate.

“No!” she said.

He bit his cheek and disappeared, but he was back the next morning. Rey sighed as soon as she sensed his presence.

“What is Exogol and why do you want me to go there?” she asked.

“It's a planet in the Unknown Regions – a hidden Sith sanctuary, home to the Sith Citadel.”

Rey got up.

“Are you seriously asking me to go there? No. No! Why? So you can become a Sith lord?”

He scoffed and said, “No. I want to destroy it.”

Rey stared at him in disbelief. He stared back seriously, his eyes shifting to the holocron once before returning to meet her gaze, waiting for her to respond.

“And how are we meant to do that?” Rey finally demanded.

“Well, it would be easy if we had Starkiller Base,” he said.

Rey glared dangerously at him and after a moment he smirked.

“But we don't need it. Our strength together in the force makes a lot of things possible,” he said.

“I will not use the force for destruction!”

“Even to destroy the last secret bastion of the Sith order?” he asked.

“N-no.”

“Think about it,” he said, and was gone.

Rey could think of nothing else for weeks – weeks during which Kylo Ren evaded her once again. The First Order spy sent news of a group of defectors hiding out on Kef Bir, one of the moons of Endor. Rey would go with Finn, Poe, and Chewie to see if they would come join the resistance.

“Well, it's no _Falcon_ ,” Poe said, as they boarded the ship they'd be taking on the journey.

“No, but it will hold more people,” Leia reminded him. “We don't know how many there are or how many will join us.”

“It's also less likely to get you noticed by the First Order,” said Lando.

Lando seemed to be very attached to the _Falcon_.

“Yeah,” Poe said with a sigh.

Rey and Chewie sat in the cabin behind the cockpit while Poe and Finn piloted the ship. It was a small space not made to hold a Wookie.

_Sorry,_ Chewie said, as he accidentally elbowed Rey in the head. 

Maddeningly, the first time Rey saw Kylo in weeks was at that moment.

“You look uncomfortable,” he said. “Traveling?”

Rey only looked at him for a few seconds, then turned her eyes back to the front window of the ship, where they had just jumped from hyperspace. Kef Bir was in front of them. Rey glanced back at Kylo, who smirked.

“I'll see you soon,” he said, and was gone.

Rey's mouth dropped open at his almost gloating tone.

“Any sign of the First Order?” she asked, looking around at the screens and panels in the cockpit.

“We're clear,” Poe said. “Let's go find the defectors.”

An uneasy feeling churned in Rey's chest as they made their descent to the moon's surface.

“Is that what I think it is?” she asked, pointed to the jagged mass sticking out of the choppy waves next to the clearing where they were about to land.

“Death Star ruins,” Finn said.

“That's our landmark,” Poe said, settling the ship down carefully. “All right. Let's see if anyone's out there.”

They exited the ship. Rey's hand remained on the saber at her hip. Chewie called out softly, looking around them. The air was misty with spray from the water and strong winds.

“Over there, look... there's someone coming over the hill,” said Finn.

They looked, and saw a rider on appear atop a large woolly creature with four legs. Poe took a step toward her, then stopped short as he saw a large band of riders crest the hill.

“I hope they're friendly,” Poe said.

“They are,” Finn replied confidently.

They walked cautiously toward the group and stopped within a few meters of the leader. She towered over them from up the hill.

“We're from the resistance,” Poe said. “We're here to ask for your help.”

“Our service?” the woman asked.

“Yes. If you wish to give it,” Poe said.

The woman turned her head to look over her shoulder at her comrades. A gust of wind pulled her long, wild curls straight back from her face, like a fierce, wild banner.

“I am Jannah,” she said. “We are already a resistance. How did you come to hear of us?”

Finn stepped forward and said, “My name is Finn. I used to be FN-2187. I sensed you through the force before I deserted the First Order. In a way, I always knew you were here, but we heard of this place through a spy.”

“There is a spy in the Order?” Jannah asked in surprise. “A brave soul. The First Order has eyes and ears everywhere. Even in places you'd least expect.”

Again, uneasiness consumed Rey. She resisted the urge to reach for her lightsaber. Jannah peered at Rey, her eyes noting the hilt of the saber, and then she turned her attention back to Finn.

“You are Jedi?” she asked him curiously.

“No, but the force is with us,” Finn said.

“The force is also with the First Order,” said Jannah. “In Supreme Leader Snoke. In his apprentice Kylo Ren.”

“Snoke is dead,” Rey said. “We – I killed him.”

“You did?” Jannah asked. “With that light sword you carry?”

“Yes. This is the saber that killed Snoke,” Rey said, touching it lightly.

Jannah seemed to be mildly impressed. The group behind her was murmuring.

“I cannot make a decision for the group. Stay with us tonight and in the morning you will have your answer. The winds have begun to rise and you'll never get off the ground in that ship until the storms pass.”

Rain began to spatter against their faces, cold and sharp as needles. They followed Jannah over the hill and into a cave lit with fires and furnished with a hodgepodge of materials they must have scavenged from the old Death Star or brought with them from distant planets when defecting.

That night, as they sat with the former stormtroopers around a fire and listened to their stories, Rey thought she felt  _him_ with her a few times, but never managed to catch sight of him. Unnerved, she did her best to remain in the moment with Finn as he told his story, which was also the story of how Rey met her first real friend. 

“How did you choose your name?” Jannah asked.

The former stormtroopers of Kef Bir had developed a tradition for choosing their names, which involved a series of strong drinks, licking the petals of a hallucinogenic flower, and meditation in front of the fire.

“Oh, my name? Poe gave it to me,” Finn said, smiling at his friend.

Poe grinned back and said, “I'm glad it stuck. It fits you.”

“I'm glad you trusted me,” Finn said.

By the next morning, the entire colony was in agreement – they would join the resistance.

“Good thing Leia made us bring the bigger ship,” Rey said, watching the caravan of people and scruffy beasts make its way over the hill.

“They could have fit,” Poe grumbled.

“Not comfortably!” Rey argued, with a laugh.

Spirits were high. Rey could not stop smiling. The spark of the resistance had ignited a flame. There was still hope in the galaxy.

Then, she saw him. Kylo Ren was standing in the wreckage of the Death Star holding his ignited lightsaber by his side.

“Look over there!” came a shout from one of the riders.

“Is it him?!” asked another.

“It's Kylo Ren!”

Rey stared at the figure in black standing on the ruined Death Star. This was no force connection. He was really there. How had he known where to find her? Was the spy compromised? Dead?

The crowd began rushing into the ship, animals panicking as their riders urged them onward.

“Everyone get in the ship!” Rey shouted, as she began running toward the shore.

“Rey! NO!” she heard Finn screaming. “Get on the ship, Rey!”

“I have to face him,” Rey said, more certain of that than anything she'd ever believed.

The force carried her faster and faster from her distraught friends, and lifted her when she jumped from the cliff's edge into one of the boats below. Rey had no idea how to sail, but the force propelled her forward. She finally found the correct ropes and opened the sail, catching the wind.

Rey could hear Chewbacca screaming at her in anguish, _No! Come back, Jedi!_

_Rey!_

Finn's meditations with Leia must have been paying off, because he burst into her thoughts through the force.

_It's me he wants,_ Rey tried to tell Finn. _Go! Get everyone to safety._

Rey hoped Finn understood her and kept sailing toward the Death Star. Kylo waited, occasionally dueling the air with his saber.

When her boat finally smacked into the side of the ruins, Rey jumped out and hit the ground running, lightsaber at the ready. She found him waiting in the same spot where he'd been watching her approach.

He turned off his saber and lowered it.

“Put that away. I don't want to fight you,” he said.

“Then why are you here?” she asked, still holding her saber aloft.

“To get your friends off this moon before someone else from the First Order notices them,” he said.

Rey blinked at him.

“What?”

He stifled another smirk.

“I'm the spy,” he said.

“No. How can you be?”

Rey narrowed her eyes at him, trying to understand.

“Why are you doing this? Why don't you just join me and fight with the resistance?” she asked.

“Because I am done being on one side or the other of this war,” he said. “I am going to end it. Not for the resistance. Not for the Order. For the galaxy.”

“For yourself, more like,” Rey said.

He looked at her calmly.

“For us,” he said.

“Stop it,” she spat. “There is no us.”

“You can't deny the truth. We are a force dyad, Rey.”

“I don't care!” she shouted.

“Join me. Please.”

He said those words in the exact way he'd done in the throne room after killing Snoke, but this time Rey refused to be moved. It enraged Rey to remember how quickly Ben had given way to Kylo in the face of power. She'd lost Ben to the Supreme Leader in a moment.

With an unintentional shout, Rey advanced on him. He met her saber's blow and blocked it easily. They stared at one another through the heat of their blades with furrowed brows and tired eyes. It always came to this in the end.

He fought defensively, and allowed her to chase him through the ruined Death Star, waiting for her to tire. Rey knew what he was doing, but did not care. It felt good to swing at him and hear the energy crackling between their sabers.

Soon Rey's arms were leaden and aching but she kept fighting, until one of her feet hit a spot of water at just the wrong angle. She slipped forward unexpectedly, and the tip of her lightsaber swiped across his bicep.

He growled at her and swiped her aside with monstrous help from the force, causing her saber to fly out of her hands. She managed to slow her fall with the force and was back on her feet before she met the floor.

If Kylo had not quickly turned off his saber, his next blow would have killed her. He dropped his lightsaber to the ground. It skidded on the floor and landed next to Rey's.

He sucked in a breath as he examined his wound, then looked at her with annoyance. Rey burst into tears. She was both sorry for hurting him and sorry that she had not managed to land a fatal blow. It was too hard to keep looking at Ben's face and see Kylo Ren looking back at her.

_Rey?_

She felt Finn's presence in the force again.

“They've come back for me,” she said.

Kylo dropped his hand from his arm and summoned his lightsaber. After replacing it on his hip, he looked at her with resignation, then offered his hand once again. Rey stared at him as fresh tears slid down her face. Then, she watched him go. A minute later his ship rose into the air and disappeared into the sky.

_Rey?_

She walked back up to the spot where Kylo had been standing earlier, waiting for her with his lightsaber. The _Falcon_ appeared in the mist and swept toward her. Poe got as close as possible to where Rey stood on the ruined Death Star. Finn clung to the ramp as it lowered, motioning for her to jump.

Rey took a deep breath, got a running start, and leapt into Finn's arms. He bear-hugged her, laughing, and led her into the ship.

“What happened? Where is Kylo Ren?” Finn asked as they crowded into the cockpit with Poe and Chewie.

“He got away,” Rey said.

“I thought he was going to kidnap you again,” Finn said.

“No,” Rey said.

“Did you give him any more scars?” Poe asked.

“Yeah,” Rey said, but she could not return Finn's grin.

“You get 'em, Jedi girl,” said Poe. “You always hand him his ass!”

Rey patted Finn on the shoulder and said, “I need to rest.”

She went to lay down, and by sheer force of will refused to cry anymore.


	6. Exogol

Rey slept for a full day once they got back to the resistance base. Leia must have been anxiously waiting for Rey to emerge from her quarters because she appeared nearly the moment Rey set foot outside.

“You fought him,” Leia said.

A pained expression settled into the lines of her face.

“Yes,” Rey said.

“What did he want?” Leia asked.

Rey kept her mind clear and calm.

“I don't know,” she said.

Did Kylo want her to tell Leia that he was the spy? Is that why he'd revealed it to Rey? What game was he playing?

“Have you heard anything else from the spy? Have they been compromised?” Rey asked.

“I haven't heard anything,” Leia said, her worry lines deepening.

Rey went out to the woods with only one purpose that day.

_Ben,_ she thought, reaching out to the force. Immediately, she was with him. He seemed to be looking in a mirror, examining his freshly-stitched wound. 

“Shall I put on a cowl?” he asked without looking at her.

“I didn't mean to do that,” Rey said.

He scoffed.

“You wanted to kill me,” he said.

Rey licked her lips.

“Can I try something?” she asked.

He peered at her over his shoulder, the angry red line of the wound punctuating his expression. Finally, he lifted his shoulder a bit, as if to say, 'go on, then'.

Rey stepped up to him and lifted her hand. Her palm hovered above the red line on his arm. He dipped his chin slightly to look down, curiosity lighting up his eyes. Rey allowed her shaking hand to touch the delicate, hot skin of the wound. She closed her eyes and found her place in the force. She could hear his breaths matching hers as she channeled all her being and consciousness through her palm and into his torn flesh. Then, a warmth gathered and dissipated, bright and tingly in her fingertips. The medical mesh disappeared as muscle and skin knit itself back together. Rey dropped her hand and let out a sound of exhausted triumph.

“It worked!” she whispered.

His face reflected her surprise, and he rubbed the unblemished skin of his bicep in wonder.

“How did you learn to do that?” he asked.

“I've been studying the ways of the ancient Jedi,” Rey said. “I can't believe it worked!”

She touched his arm again, marveling at her handiwork. He brushed his own fingers over the back of her hand.

“Amazing,” he said, and looked at her with wonder in his eyes – eyes that fell briefly to her mouth and returned with a question.

Rey very much wanted to answer that question, but instead she squeezed her eyes shut and broke the connection.

“No,” she whispered to the empty air.

Rey dreamed that she killed Kylo Ren that night. Over and over, no matter how many times she woke, meditated deep within the force, and drifted back off to sleep, she found herself driving a lightsaber into his chest – a red lightsaber. She smiled as she made the killing blow. Rey woke shaking every time, her heart pounding.

When he appeared with her in the woods the next morning, he offered his hand again.

“I need you to come to Exogol with me,” he said.

“That's not a good idea,” Rey said.

He peered at her.

“You've seen something? What?”

Rey shook her head.

“Tell me,” he insisted.

“If we go to Exogol, you'll die,” Rey said.

She had not considered the dream a warning against Exogol until that moment, but now it seemed perfectly clear.

“Then you'll get what you want,” he said.

“That's not what I want!” Rey replied.

It was miserable, looking at his mask-like face as he accepted her hatred. She walked over and put her hand under his forearm, lifting it between them so that she could look at the hand he'd offered so her so many times.

“I want – ”

She sniffed and sighed through fresh tears.

“I want to take _Ben's_ hand,” she said.

He did not say anything, but stared at his own hand. After a minute, he closed it into a fist and dropped it to his side, shaking it from her grasp.

“Ben Solo is dead,” he said, in exactly the same manner he had before. As if it was his mantra.

He disappeared, and Rey wiped her eyes.

“Fine!” she shouted.

She made her decision. She would go to Exogol with Kylo Ren. If he was willing to risk death, then so be it. Rey could not bear to continue seeing Kylo Ren wearing Ben Solo's face, twisting it into a cold, dead thing. She could not live connected to the dark, unnatural creature that was holding the man she loved captive. It would be easier to live as half of a force dyad, whatever that meant, than to keep torturing herself with hope.

If Luke or Leia were privy to her plan and her dreams, what would they think? Perhaps the darkness had hold of Rey already. She recalled the red saber of her dreams, but she did not fear it. If she did this for Ben, and for no other reason, she would not fall to the dark side.

That night, sitting on her bed, she reached out to him.

“I will go with you to Exogol,” she said curtly, without preamble.

He was standing stiffly with his arms behind his back. Slowly, he turned his head to look at her.

“Why did you change your mind?” he asked.

“I'm doing it for Ben,” she said. “ _Not_ you.”

He scoffed and looked away.

“I am Ben. I'm all that's left of him,” he said.

Rey got up and stepped closer to him.“We'll see,” she said.

She hoisted her packed bag onto her shoulder.

“Am I coming to you or are you coming to me?” she asked.

He turned toward her.

“I've already made preparations. My ship is ready. We can leave immediately.”

He looked her up and down, then hesitantly moved closer.

“How does this work? Do you know even know what you're doing?” Rey asked, leaning away from him.

“It won't work unless we're close. Touching,” he said, looking down at her blankly.

After a moment, Rey nodded. He slipped his arm under hers. His fingers gently came to rest on her back. Suddenly, he bent to place his other arm behind her knees and lifted her. The force surged between them, through Rey and around her, making her stomach flip and the world spin even though he was holding her tightly against his chest.

Once the room stopped spinning, Rey noted that she was in his quarters. Kylo put her down and backed away quickly.

“How am I going to get to your ship without anyone seeing me?” she asked.

He turned and walked into what must have been his closet. He came back out holding stormtrooper gear.

“This should fit,” he said.

He piled it into her arms.

“You can change in there,” he said, pointing to a door.

Rey went into the spacious, empty white bathroom and put on the armor. When she came out, he was holding the stormtrooper helmet on his hip.

“This is uncomfortable!” she complained, tugging at the shoulder plate which was digging into her skin.

He tossed her the helmet. Rey put it on and stuffed her outer garments and boots into her bag.

“I'll take that,” Kylo said.

Reluctantly, she handed it to him. He swung onto his shoulder, hiding it underneath his cape.

“Let's go,” he said.

Thankfully, there was nobody around to see a stormtrooper accompany Kylo Ren out of his quarters. Rey followed him down the corridor, wondering if she was making a terrible mistake.

If anybody working in the hanger wondered why a stormtrooper might be joining the Supreme Leader on a journey inside the cramped cockpit of his TIE Silencer, they did not let on in the slightest.

With some difficulty, Rey scrambled into the small space behind the pilot's seat in the cockpit. She kept her helmet on until Kylo was ready to make the jump to hyperspace, unintentionally holding her breath as they exited the hangar.

“Ahh,” she gasped, pulling off the helmet at last.

She immediately set to work removing her armor and replacing it with her own garments. Kylo did not seem to notice.

“Hold on. This is going to be rough,” he said.

They dropped out of hyperspace directly in front of an angry red nebula that gave Rey a bad feeling. It was full of dark things, she sensed.

Kylo was right, but Rey soon realized that their path might have been far more harrowing if he was anything less than an expert pilot. Even Poe would not have been able to navigate the nebula with such quiet concentration and graceful aerobatics. Kylo did not utter a single word, though Rey was swearing enough for the both of them.

As they exited the nebula, Rey realized she was gripping onto the back of his seat with white knuckles.

Slowly, she let go and leaned back.

“That's Exogol,” he said.

The planet was dark. The atmosphere swirled with dust, almost enough to make it look like a gas planet. As they got closer, Rey could see flashes of lightning rolling across the skies as far as the eye could see.

“Charming,” she said.

She leaned forward to look at the side of his face.

“How exactly are we going to destroy it?” she asked, realizing this was a question she should have asked before she put on a stormtrooper suit and got into his ship.

“We're going to use the lightning,” he said.

“Use the lightning,” Rey repeated, mystified.

What could that mean? Kylo dove toward the planet's atmosphere.

“Oh, we're actually going down there,” Rey commented.

She shuddered. The ominous feeling in her body intensified. This was a nasty, vile place. A Sith holy place. A shrine to evil.

“Do, ah...” she said.

“What?” he asked.

“Do Sith also come back as ghosts? Is that a thing? Like Luke?”

“No,” said Kylo.

“Oh, good,” Rey said.

“They can't come back exactly in that way, but they can haunt a place, if they have enough power to make it stick,” he said.

“Oh.”

Rey now fully regretted agreeing to come to Exogol. She wanted nothing more than to wait for Kylo to exit the ship and then steal it and get as far away as possible.

_For Ben_ , she reminded herself. 

They disembarked. Rey ignored the hand Kylo offered to help her out of the ship and jumped down on her own.

“Now what?” she said.

“Now we visit the Sith temple,” he said.

“What? Why do we need to do that? Can't we just... zap it from here?”

He began striding toward the jagged mountains in front of them, the only feature in an otherwise barren landscape. The ground was dusty and parched, with deep cracks cutting through it. Rey jumped carefully over the larger ones and held her scarf over her face to block the swirling dust. Kylo pulled his cape over his face and continued to stalk toward their destination.

The entrance to the temple was an immense stone slab that had to be lowered using the force. Rey helped Kylo lower them down, past the ancient statues of Sith Masters that were nearly as tall as the mountain itself.

“I don't like this,” she said.

Kylo had a determined look on his face. He did not seem to notice Rey's words. Once they got to the bottom, they walked down the line of massive statues. Even Kylo, who was very tall, was only the height of the statues' toes. He seemed to know where he was going.

At the end, they quickly came to the edge of a cliff face. The sheer drop-off went straight down, seemingly into oblivion. A faint, dusty grey glow emanated from the pit.

“I _really_ don't like this,” Rey said.

They scooted along the edge of the pit, and Rey saw that there were stairs at intervals around it, leading upward in twisted, zig-zagged paths to dark openings in the cliffs.

Kylo went straight to the widest stairs and began the ascent.

“What are we looking for?” Rey asked. “Can you hear me? Hello?”

He stopped abruptly and looked at her over his shoulder.

“Don't worry,” he said.

Rey groaned when he turned around and kept walking. At the top of the very long stair, which must have been the longest of any of them, there was a wide, empty plateau, and on the far side of the vast, smoothly-cut expanse was a throne.

“No,” Rey said. “Kylo, No!”

He turned back and stood looking at her as if he was trying to be patient.

“It's not what you think,” he said.

“Are you or are you not planning to walk over there and sit on that throne?” she demanded.

“It's not a throne, Rey. Look closer. Use the force. You'll feel it.”

She did as he said, even though she did not want to take her eyes off of him.

“It's an execution chair...” she said slowly. “Why?”

“There are many Sith rituals that involve sacrifice,” Kylo said. “Too many to name.”

He walked toward it.

“Stop, what are you doing?” she asked.

“I just want to look at it,” he said. “We're the last people to see this place. We should at least know what we are destroying.”

There was a morbid fascination in his eyes. He turned and continued toward the seat.

“Kylo...” she whispered helplessly.

“ _Kylo.._ ” whispered an echo.

Rey shivered uncontrollably.

“Ben!” she tried.

“ _Ben...heh-heh...”_

Rey's lightsaber was out in an instant. That was not an echo. Somebody else was here.

Kylo whirled around with his saber out as well.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Someone's here!” Rey said.

The both looked around and listened. The laugh returned.

_Did you hear that?_ Rey mouthed at Kylo. 

He nodded.

_Long have I waited for you to find your way here... Ben Solo_ , said the voice in a croaky whisper. 

“Ben Solo is dead!” shouted Kylo, spinning around with his saber raised to eye level, trying to locate the source of the voice.

Rey steadied her grip on her lightsaber anxiously. The voice laughed, and this time it rang through the cavernous expanse above them.

“ _If that were true, you would not have been able to persuade my dear grand-daughter to accompany you to Exogol.”_

The ominous fear that had been growing rose up in Rey like dark ink clouding water.

“Who are you? What are you?!” Kylo screamed.

“ _I am the Emperor. I am Exogol! I am all the Sith!”_

A red glow emanated from the pit, and brought with it an uncomfortable heat.

“Ben...” Rey cried, as the warmth overtook her, until she was burning, flames licking every nerve in her body.

Lightning struck the ground between them as the voice laughed again. Rey fell to the ground and was vaguely aware that her body convulsed there a few times. She had no control over herself. A presence, dark and vile, was pressing into her every cell, wringing the light from her body.

She screamed and saw Kylo's dark figure leap toward her, but another lightning strike kept him from her. Then, her body stopped fighting. The darkness took over. She stood up.

“ _Yes, feel the power, girl. That is the force of two generations held back and then tipped into one vessel. Search your mind and see the truth.”_

Rey knew the truth. Her parents were filthy junk traders. Her father had failed to inherit a destiny in the force, which was just as well since he was the bastard child of a prostitute. Her grandmother, a nobody, somehow hid her son from the most powerful force-wielder in the galaxy.

“ _I have seen you, my heir, and I've waited for the moment you would come here to claim your destiny and strike down the last of the Skywalker bloodline. Their legacy ends with Ben Solo, the boy who wanted to be Vader!”_

He laughed again. Rey lifted her lightsaber and caught Kylo's eyes. For the first time, he was frightened of her. She smiled.

“ _Snoke thought you could be formed into something truly great, but I knew, one day, I would witness... THIS! Justice!”_

A searing heat on her back urged Rey to attack, and she lunged at Kylo. She fought with a strength and ferocity she'd never felt before. The force rushed through her veins, swift and hot.

“Rey!” Kylo screamed. “Fight him! Go back to the light!”

Even in her feverish state of vengeance, Rey appreciated the irony of a man holding a saber made from a bleeding kyber crystal begging her to return to the light.

She laughed.

“I told you that you would die on Exogol,” she said.

They dueled for what seemed hours. Rey seemed to only be getting stronger, and she could sense his exhaustion. At last, she managed to disarm him. She caught him with the force and threw him into the execution throne to the sound of mad cackling from the voice and thunder from the sky.

Rey summoned his lightsaber from the air and raised it against him. His face was resigned as the blow came – into his belly and up through his chest, just as he'd done to his own father.

As Rey stared into his eyes, they changed to those of a sad boy. When she removed the blade, he cried out and gasped in pain, his chest heaving with his final breaths. The laughter faded from her ears, which began to ring. All she could hear were labored, rasping breaths. Her vision blurred. All she could see clearly were his eyes, now lowered, staring in shock at the hole in his body.

“Ben!” she cried, dropping his saber.

Rey came back to herself, and the laughter stopped. She fell to her knees beside him, repeating his name over and over. She put her hand over his wound, weeping. Then, her other hand as well. She closed her eyes, and shook with the effort to channel the incredible energy and power she'd just been filled with into her palms.

It was working, but too slowly. She could feel the life leaving him.

“ _No! You will not deny your destiny!”_

A bolt of lightning struck Rey, but instead of knocking her aside or breaking her focus, she seemed to absorb it – _they_ seemed to absorb it between them. The power gave Rey's healing a push, and Ben was almost immediately whole again.

She helped him up and lifted her saber. As he reached for his own lightsaber, lightning struck it and cracked the hilt in half.

“Ben!”

Rey thrust Leia's saber into his hands.

“Rey!”

Ben swung the saber to meet her blade, just in time to deflect another bolt of lightning. Their crossed sabers seemed to meld with the lightning, and it became impossible to let go.

“Is this what you had in mind when you said 'use the lightning'?!” Rey screamed.

“Not exactly!” he shouted back.

Rey felt her feet leave the ground, and looked wildly around, clinging to the hilt of her saber as it shook violently in her hand.

“What's happening?!” she asked, but her words were drowned out by the crackling and thunder around them.

They were lifted into the air, as if a magnetic pull was drawing the force through their sabers toward the lightning. Rey could not understand how they were still alive. Her arms ached under the weight of her body.

“Hold on!” Ben yelled in her ear.

It seemed the voice was gone, and the powerful Sith ghost that haunted the planet was now putting all of its strength into creating more lightning to strike them down. Only, with each strike that landed, the beam of energy attaching them to their sabers and suspending them in the air, high above the cliff, became larger. Rey could see the depths of the great pit below them, glowing red as if on fire.

“I know what we have to do,” Ben said.

He searched her face and looked into her eyes, and Rey knew it, too. She'd seen it in a vision, hadn't she?

Rey nodded. He nodded back.

“One hand to the ship. On the count of three, we let go,” he said.

Rey nodded again and stretched her left arm out toward the ship, which was barely visible through the storm. Ben did the same.

“One. Two. Three!”

Rey screamed with the effort of breaking the connection to her saber, but she managed to wrench her hand off the hilt. The blades remained fused after being flung down into the red, glowing abyss. The beam of collected lightning burst forward, down into the pit, blasting the edges of the cliffs away as it went.

As they force-pulled themselves toward the ship in a controlled fall through the air, Ben's arm found her waist and he held her to his side. They crash-landed together with a painful thud inside the cockpit.

Ben took most of the blow from the fall and uttered a soft, “Ow.”

Before Rey could right herself, he scrambled into in the pilot's seat and flew them away from the rumbling planet. Once they were a safe distance away, Ben turned the TIE around and they watched as Exogol imploded into strobing, fiery dust and then finally went dark.


	7. Ben

“We did it,” Rey breathed, leaning forward.

Ben fell back against the pilot's seat, clearly as spent as Rey. She needed to see more than the side of his face. Rey climbed around the seat and awkwardly knelt over his outstretched legs.

“We did it,” she repeated, staring at him. “Your scar is gone.”

She touched his face without hesitation. He blinked in surprise and the corner of his mouth rose. Rey placed her thumb over the corner of his mouth, then touched the dimple beside it. She smiled back at him, and his expression became fragile and uncertain.

“Ben...” she said, and the name filled her with joy instead of broken hope.

Not knowing at all what she was doing, Rey leaned forward and kissed him. A tiny noise that might have been a sob escaped him. He pulled her into his chest and kissed her back.

A few long moments later, Rey pulled away to look at him again. Yes, this was her Ben, healed and whole. Kylo Ren was destroyed on Exogol, as her vision had shown her. It was almost too much to stand. Rey grinned at him, her hand still cradling his face, unsure what to do next. He seemed content to stare back at her.

“I'm sorry I tried to kill you,” she said.

“Which time?” he asked, and a wide smile broke on his face.

Rey laughed through her sudden tears. He wiped the one that fell down her cheek with his thumb, and smoothed back the wild frizzy tendrils of hair that had escaped her braid and were clinging to her temple. Ben's eyes moved over her face, as if he was taking in the sight of her for the last time.

“I can't go back to the First Order,” he said, and Rey sensed his deep weariness and pain at the thought of returning to the _Supremacy_ as Kylo Ren.

“But you're the Supreme Leader,” Rey said. “What will happen if you don't return?”

“Hux will take over.”

“Won't that be worse?” asked Rey. “He'll resume the hunt for the resistance. We're not ready.”

The relaxed warmth left Ben's eyes and he sighed.

“You're right. I have to go back,” he said.

Rey felt a nudge from the force, just enough to confirm that what she was about to say was the right thing.

“I'm coming with you,” she said.

This seemed to break him, and he could not speak for a moment. Finally, he rubbed her arm with his large, warm hand and nodded.

“Before we go back, I want to see my mother,” he said.

Rey gave him the coordinates for the resistance base, and climbed out of his lap. She left the piloting to Ben and sat meditating in the cabin behind him.

_Leia._

She reached out for the General, and found her.

_He's coming home._

Rey felt Leia's relief reverberate through time and space.

_Ben!_

As they approached the planet's surface, Rey directed Ben to land the ship far away from the eyes of the resistance base. They dove through heavy cloud cover and landed in a remote part of the forest. It would be a long journey to the base, but they couldn't risk anyone seeing the Supreme Leader's personal ship and raising the alarm.

They began walking, with Rey leading the way. Halfway to the base, she gasped and grabbed Ben's arm, pulling him into a gully. A speeder swept past them.

“Rey! Rey?”

It was Finn!

“Rey, I know you're out there. The force told me. Leia sent me to find you... both of you.”

Rey and Ben slowly rose from the gully together.

“Finn?”

“Rey!”

Finn ran over and enveloped her in a hug, picking her off the ground for a second.

“I can't believe it,” he said, looking over her shoulder at Ben. “Are you sure about this?”

“I'm sure,” Rey said.

She was giddy and unprepared to explain herself. Finn let go of her and stared at Ben.

“What do I call you?” he asked stiffly.

“My name. Ben Solo.”

They piled on the speeder, Rey behind Finn, and Ben behind her. In no time they were at the base. Finn brought them right up to the open hatch of the _Falcon_. Ben stared up at it with apprehension.

“The General is inside,” Finn said, glancing at Ben, then at Rey.

“I'll wait out here. Go on,” Rey said to Ben.

She sat down cross-legged on the ramp and saw Poe standing at a distance, staring. He walked closer.

“Was that _Kylo Ren_?” he asked.

“Kylo Ren is dead,” Rey said. “I killed him.”

“Who was that, then?” Poe asked.

Finn put his arm around Poe and patted his shoulder.

“That was Ben Solo,” Finn said.

Poe's wide-eyed look of concern turned to smiling disbelief.“That was _Ben Solo?_ ”

Finn nodded. Poe looked at Rey.

“But Kylo Ren is dead? How does that work?”

Rey began to cry. Poe looked horrified.

“What's wrong? Was it something I said?” he asked.

Rey just shook her head and pressed her closed fist to her lips. The moment Poe said “Ben Solo”, she'd suddenly sensed that Ben was crying in his mother's arms. She could feel his pain and shame as if it were her own. She could feel Leia's sorrow and exultation. She could feel love and forgiveness knitting the torn fabric of their lives back together.

“It's been a long day,” was all she could say.

Finn and Poe left her, after making her promise to fill them in once she'd gotten some rest. Rey sat wiping her tears until the tumult of emotion between mother and son turned into the warmth of acceptance. Then, Rey smiled.

After a while, Rose appeared and hesitantly walked up to Rey. She sat down beside her on the ramp.

“You look happy,” Rose said after a while. “Dirty... but happy.”

Rey laughed and said, “I am happy.”

“So, there's hope? Like, real hope? Not just believing it's still somewhere out there in the night, but hope you can actually see?” Rose asked.

“Yes,” Rey said.

“Rey?” came Ben's voice.

The two women turned to look at Ben, who was standing at the top of the ramp. He had shed the Supreme Leader's coat, cape, and gloves, and was wearing only a black undershirt with a large hole burned through it. Rose's mouth hung open.

“The General wants to see you,” he said, and beckoned her to join him.

Rey stood and as she climbed the ramp, Ben held out his hand over the steps. Rey took it and allowed him to help her up. Once inside, he pulled her arm against his chest and looked down at their clasped hands with a small smile. He led her into the cabin where Leia waited for them. Leia did not miss the moment Ben let go of Rey's hand as they entered.

“Rey,” she said warmly.

Leia hugged Rey for far longer than Rey normally allowed anyone to touch her.

“Thank you for bringing back my son. I wish you had told me about your plan, though. The base has been on high alert since you disappeared.”

“I didn't think you would approve,” Rey said.

“The plan was foolish, but... the force was with you,” Leia said.

Rey looked at Ben.

“Did he tell you what happened?” Rey asked.

“I told her that we went to Exogol and found the Sith temple, that it was haunted by the force presence of Emperor Palpatine, and that we destroyed it using the power of the dyad,” he said.

So, he had not told Leia that Rey fell to the dark influence of her evil ancestor, nearly succeeded in murdering her son, then healed him, before completing the task. He had not revealed that Rey was the descendent of the Skywalker family's worst enemy and the heir of the great terror that used to rule the galaxy.

Rey nodded. Perhaps that news was best saved for another time.

“And I told her that you want to return with me to the First Order,” Ben said.

“Which I do not think is a good idea,” Leia said. “You will never be trusted by the Order, Rey. Even if you are the apprentice of the Supreme Leader. They believe you assassinated Snoke. Do not think that the force makes you invincible. Cunning people will still find a way to take you down when you least expect it.”

“I wasn't planning on bringing her back as my apprentice,” Ben said.

“Then what...?” Leia began to ask, but she did not have to finish the question.

She raised an eyebrow and looked at Rey expectantly, as did Ben. Rey looked back at them, unable to discern what had just passed between them.

“What?” she asked.

Leia looked at her son.

“Well, I'm not going to ask her for you,” she said.

He stepped forward.

“I want – I've always wanted – for you to join me. As my partner. As... my wife.”

Rey froze.

“It wasn't Kylo Ren offering you his hand. It was me. I was too ashamed to ask for what I wanted. I knew I didn't deserve your love.”

He took her hand and held it reverently between his own. Rey put her other hand over her mouth and tried to keep her composure.

“You had it the whole time,” she said through her fingers.

Ben wrapped her in a crushing hug. From behind them, Rey heard Leia speak.

“I suppose that is a slightly better plan,” she said. “But it still won't win you any friends in the First Order, son.”

“If all goes as planned, Hux and his supporters won't have time to complete their coup. The resistance will pull theirs off first,” Ben replied.

Rey and Ben faced Leia together, still holding on to one another.

“The galaxy will not remember either of you fondly,” Leia said. “Ben, It will not matter if the resistance pardons you. Your change of heart and your role in taking down the First Order will forever be attributed to self-preservation in the face of a crumbling, failed First Order. Rey, they will remember you as the Jedi who was corrupted and left the resistance. It pains me to think of it.”

“It's a better end than I deserve,” Ben said.

“And I don't care what anyone thinks of me,” Rey said. “I will know the truth. My friends will know. That's all that matters.”

Leia sighed and said, “When will you return to the First Order?”

“As soon as possible,” Ben said. “If I delay in my return, Hux will make his move. There is something else I need to do.”

He went to pick up his discarded coat and pulled something out of a pocket – the cracked hilt of his lightsaber.

“I will heal it, and rebuild it,” he said, showing it to Leia, who nodded.

Rey suddenly remembered that she had lost both of the lightsabers that had been entrusted to her.

“I'm sorry, Leia... yours was destroyed on Exogol. So was Luke's.”

“My dear, I was never going to use it, and that was not Luke Skywalker's lightsaber. That was Anakin Skywalker's, his father,” said Leia. “I believe you know where to find Luke's?”

“Oh!” Rey said. “Ahch-To! Of course!”

“You should build your own,” Ben said.

“There isn't time,” Rey replied. “But one day I will.”

“You know, Ahch-To seems like a lovely, secluded place, from what you've told me,” Leia said.

“It's nice,” Rey agreed.

“Perhaps it would be a nice spot for a ceremony,” Leia mused.

“Oh, there's no need for that,” Rey said hastily.

“I would like to see the place where my brother passed into the force,” said Leia. “And I'm sure Finn would benefit from visiting the sacred isle of the Jedi Order as he begins his training.”

Ben's look of surprise was ignored as Leia continued.

“Rose is your friend, and she does nothing but talk of the Jedi when you're gone. We could bring her along,” said Leia.

“And Poe?” Rey asked, curious as to whether Leia could find a reason to bring him on their trip to Ahch-To.

“Poe is our best pilot, so of course he'll have to come. I'm not going to fly myself to the Unknown Regions,” Leia said.

Rey grinned at the look on Ben's face. Perhaps he regretted their trip to the resistance base. They might have already been back at the First Order together, getting on with his plan to introduce Rey as his wife.

“If you're going to Ahch-To anyway, why not have some company on the journey?” Leia asked innocently.

So it was that the _Falcon_ was prepared to leave the next morning. The only matter to settle was who would get to be co-pilot. It was Rose who inadvertently started the argument. Finn and Poe were talking about the journey to Ahch-To, excitedly pouring over the map that would take them there, when Rose spoke.

“You aren't going to let Ben fly his father's ship?” she asked Poe.

“The General specifically asked me to pilot her to Ahch-To,” said Poe defensively.

Rose looked at Finn.

“I'm his co-pilot,” Finn said, shrugging.

Ben was out of ear-shot, talking with Leia and one of the commanders. Only those who might recognize the Supreme Leader, or otherwise needed to know, were now privy to the fact that he was the First Order spy.

“Does he want to fly the _Falcon_?” Finn asked Rey. “Maybe he doesn't even want to be on that ship. Too many memories, you know?”

“He wants to be there,” Rey said. “I'm sure he would like to pilot the _Falcon_ one day.”

Chewie chimed in, saying he would be Ben's co-pilot if both of them were too scared. This was the first time Chewie had spoken since Ben returned.

“Hey, why is he even coming to Ahch-To?” asked Poe. “I thought he hated Luke Skywalker.”

“He's making amends,” Rose said. “You've got to start somewhere. Sacred Jedi planet where Luke was last seen alive seems like a good place to start.”

“I can't wait until I'm ready to build my own lightsaber,” Finn said. “Training without one is so boring.”

“Don't let Leia hear you or you'll never get your hands on one,” Rey said.

“Maybe I should let him be co-pilot instead of you,” Poe told Finn. “Then I can tell everyone the Supreme Leader was taking orders from me.”

“Who is going to believe that?” Finn asked him.

Rose coughed loudly and Finn looked up in time to see Ben come to stand behind Rey. The faces of everyone seated at the table changed to expressions of surprise as they watched him briefly place a hand on her shoulder before sitting down beside her.

Silence descended on the table until Poe cleared his throat.

“So, ah... Ben.”

Ben turned his attention to Poe.

“Wow, that was weird. Can I call you something else?” asked Poe.

“Such as?” asked Ben.

“I dunno... how about 'Supreme Leader Ben'?” asked Poe.

“All right,” Ben said, with a small shrug.

He was wearing his coat and cape again, as it was a cold evening. Leia had given him some clothes without holes in the chest to wear, but unfortunately none of the garments were long enough to fit his tall frame. Rey nearly giggled to herself, remembering the moment he'd put on the shirt and vest that were comically too short. It would not do for the Supreme Leader to walk around looking like that, so he was back in his usual garb.

“Right. So, Supreme Leader Ben, I just have one question for you,” said Poe.

He let the tense silence sit on the table for a moment, until Ben scowled at him. Poe leaned forward.

“Have you ever arm-wrestled a Wookiee? Because Chewie here says you don't stand a chance.”

Ben leaned toward Poe.

“There's no such thing as arm-wrestling a Wookiee. Wrestle a Wookiee, and it's the last time you'll have arms.”

Chewbacca laughed heartily and banged his fist on the table, making their cups jump and slide around. Ben sat back and smirked to himself. He glanced at Chewbacca.

“But _that_ Wookiee used to let me win every time,” he said.

Chewbacca protested half-heartedly as the whole table laughed and Rose said, “Awww...”

Ben stood up and went over to Chewbacca, who also stood, towering a few hands above even Ben's height.

“Are we still family?” he asked.

Rey wondered if anybody else noticed the slight shake in Ben's hand as he held it out to Chewie.

_Not yet,_ said Chewie.


	8. A Wedding and a Fight

“What have I done?” Poe asked, wringing his hands as he watched Chewbacca and Ben prepare to face off in the clearing in front of Rey's meditation stump.

“I'm going to get Supreme Leader Ben killed and then we're going to lose the war,” he continued.

“The General is going to be pissed,” Finn agreed. “You might get demoted again.”

Ben was down to his undershirt, his breath visible in the air as he warmed up. Chewie waited impatiently for his adopted prodigal son to signal he was ready.

_No Jedi stuff,_ Chewie reminded him.

Ben nodded. Chewie howled and ran toward him. Ben stepped neatly out of the way, but not fast enough. Chewie's elbow hit him in the back and he stumbled.

“I don't understand what's happening,” Rose said nervously.

“Ben's going to get his ass beat,” Finn said.

“Why?” Rose asked.

“I don't know, but it's going to be fun to watch,” Poe said.

Rose screamed as Chewie picked Ben up like he weighed nothing and tossed him over his head. Ben bent the rules and softened his fall with the force, but still let out a convincing groan when he hit the ground.

“Is the point humiliation?” Rose asked, unable to watch without commenting.

“The point is, Ben hurt Chewie a lot, and now Chewie's going to hurt Ben a little, and then everything will be fine,” Finn said.

“Will it?” Rose asked skeptically.

Rey tugged Rose aside, where the men would not hear them.

“Ben's still using the force defensively,” she said. “And look, Chewie could have just snapped his arm off, but he only pushed him over.”

“What's the point, then?!” Rose exclaimed.

“Maybe it's the first time Chewie isn't going to let him win,” Rey said.

A light dawned in Rose's eyes.

“Oh, I get it. Instead, Ben's going to let Chewie win. It's like saying 'I love you' in Wookiee!”

Rey laughed and said, “Maybe.”

The play fight went on long enough that others on the base eventually heard the commotion and came to see what was going on. When the General arrived to watch, Poe slipped away, dragging Finn with him to watch from somewhere out of her line of sight.

Finally, Chewie wrestled Ben to the ground and held him there until Ben shouted, “Fine, Chewie, you win! You win.”

Chewie helped Ben up, before crying out, _My_ _son has returned_ , and hugging him. Ben's body nearly disappeared in the Wookiee's furry arms, but Rey could see that he was patting Chewie's back heartily.

“Rey, look,” Rose whispered.

Rey followed the direction of Rose's head nod to a shadow under the trees behind them. Finn and Poe were sitting on a fallen tree, likely the one she and Ben had felled when dueling through the force bond. It looked like they had forgotten all about the fight and were engaged in a serious conversation.

“I never did have that conversation with Finn,” Rose said.

Poe said something and Finn broke into the most beautiful, genuine smile Rey had ever seen on his face. Rose sighed wistfully.

“Everybody's got someone but me,” she said.

“There's a lot of other people on this base,” Rey said.

Rose nodded and sighed again.

“Yeah,” Rose said. “I'm glad you asked me to come with you to Ahch-To, Rey. It means a lot to me.”

The next morning, the whole company boarded the _Falcon_ early. Poe and Finn took their places in the cockpit. Chewie and Ben sat down to play holochess, and Leia, Rey, and Rose were followed inside by BB-8.

“So, we're going to Ahch-To to find Luke Skywalker's lightsaber?” asked Rose.

_Because the Jedi girl lost two lightsabers already_ , Chewie said playfully.

“Yes,” Rey said to Rose, ignoring Chewie's ribbing.

“To be fair, it was mostly my fault,” Ben said.

“Mostly?” Rey asked.

“Fine, it was all my fault,” Ben said.

After a moment of silence, Rey cleared her throat. Now was as good a time as any to tell them.

“But we're not going to Ahch-To just to find Luke's saber,” Rey said.

“Oh? What else is there?” asked Rose, staring with interest at the game of holochess being played before her.

“Leia's going to perform the ceremony for us,” said Rey.

“Ceremony...” said Rose. She slowly turned her attention away from the game.

“What ceremony?” she asked.

Rey, Ben, and Leia were all smiling now.

“Ben and I are going back to the First Order together. Married,” Rey said.

Rose stood up.

“No way! Oh my god, I _knew_ something was going on between the two of you! Hold on – this isn't just a fake spy marriage, right? Like, you're getting _married_ , married?”

“As married as can be,” Rey said, laughing.

“I can't – this is just – I mean – Ben, we just met – and you're the Supreme Leader – and I keep calling you Kylo Ren in my head – but...”

Rose held out her arms to him.

“Can I hug you both? Rey, come here!”

Rose put an arm around each of them and pulled them together.

“This is crazy AND amazing,” she said.

Ben was visibly relieved when Rose let go of him.

“What's Rose so excited about back there?” called Finn.

“Oh my god, can I tell him? No, wait – you should do that, not me,” Rose said to Rey.

Rey laughed and said, “Go ahead and tell him. I don't mind.”

Rose made a high-pitched noise of happiness and ran to the cockpit.

“What?!” they heard Finn say, then the sound of their muffled low voices as they discussed the news.

_This is good news_ , said Chewie after a while, and he and Ben went back to playing holochess.

When they landed and exited the ship, Poe surveyed the island and said, “So what'll it be first? The hunt for the saber, or the wedding?”

“The saber,” Rey and Ben said, nearly in unison.

First, Rey gave everyone a tour of the island. The fussy inhabitants stayed hidden, but for a few that stuck their heads out from around rocks and doorways to give Rey disapproving looks. So they remembered her.

Rey brought the group to the reflection pool and the rock where she'd first learned to meditate in the force, and there, on the ground beneath the stone, lay the lightsaber. She retrieved it and stared at the hilt glinting in the sun. Then, she ignited the blade and took a few test swings.

_Don't lose that one_ , said Luke's voice.

Leia, Ben, and Rey turned their heads to see him sitting on the rock ledge above them, legs crossed, eyes closed. Rey smiled.

“I won't,” she said.

_You know, I think you should rebuild it,_ said Luke. _Green's not your color._

“I can't rebuild this lightsaber!” Rey protested. “It's part of the galaxy's history!”

_Well, it was my saber, and in my view, it's better for old things be transformed into something new,_ Luke said.

He looked at Ben and winked.

_Hey kid. I hear I'm invited to a wedding today. Here, of all places, on a sacred Jedi isle!_

Ben nodded and put his arm around Rey.

“That's right, uncle.”

_Well, this apparition trick is taking it out of me lately. Better do it sooner than later, if you want me at this party._

The sun was setting on the island. It cast a brilliant golden glow on the group, who wore confused expressions as they listened to the one-sided conversation.

“Ready?” Rey said to Ben, then turned to look at her friends with a smile.

“Right here? Now?” asked Rose, grinning.

Rey nodded. Leia put a hand on her son's elbow and made him turn to face Rey.

“Take his hands, dear,” Leia told her.

Rey obeyed and placed her hands into Ben's open palms.

“Now, look into each other's eyes and make a silent vow to love, protect, and support one another.”

Rey was so lost in his gaze she barely heard Leia's next words. She could sense his love for her pouring out of him into the force between them. Rey had never experienced anything as warm and pure in her life. This is what it was to belong, at last. She smiled up at him, and a small, tender smile appeared on his lips in response.

“Now, you may exchange tokens of your commitment,” she said.

Ben and Rey looked at Leia in confusion, pulled suddenly from the transcendence of the force bond in that moment by her words.

“We don't have any,” Rey whispered.

“Oh, no?” Leia winked at her and reached into her own robe.

She handed Ben a ring with a black stone and Rey a simple black and silver band.

“That was your grandmother's,” she told Ben, then looked at Rey.

“And that was Han's.”

Leia waited and watched with a small, satisfied smile as the rings were exchanged.

“Now, in the eyes of these witnesses, you may share a gesture of affection to seal your vow.”

Rey looked at Leia, then at Ben.

“You're supposed to kiss!” heckled Poe from behind them.

Rey laughed and stood on her tiptoes. Ben smiled and brushed his lips against hers.

“Oh, come on, what is she, your sister?”

Rey pulled him back down for a longer kiss, her cheeks beginning to burn as her friends cheered and whistled. They returned to the _Falcon_ in the quickly-fading light. Poe stepped out of the cockpit and gestured to Ben.

“Would the newlyweds like to fly us back?” he asked.

Ben accepted Poe's handshake with a smile and folded himself into the pilot's seat. Rey followed him. Poe came in behind them as she settled into her seat.

“All right, guys. This is gonna be a great trip, just the three of us,” he said, hanging an arm over the back of each seat.

Rey and Ben wordlessly turned their heads to stare at him. Poe grinned and patted their shoulders.

“I'm just kidding,” he said.

Rey heard him laugh as he left them alone. Ben set the coordinates for their journey and leaned back.

“Ready?” he asked, reaching for her hand.

Rey slipped her fingers between his and nodded. He leaned over to steal a lingering kiss from her.

“I wonder what's taking so long?” came Poe's loud voice. “Maybe he can only fly TIE fighters?”

Without ending the kiss, Ben lifted his hand and flicked two fingers at the control panel. The ship began to rise off the ground. Rey smiled into his lips, and then pushed him away.

“Pay attention!” she insisted.

Ben and Rey's journey was only halfway over when they arrived back at the resistance base. The Supreme Leader had already been away too long. It was time to introduce Rey to the First Order.

Leia gifted Rey some new clothes – all black.

“Why don't you leave these here, for when you return,” Leia suggested, gesturing to Rey's old clothes.

Rey left her friends wearing a black robe and one of Leia's capes with a tall collar. The heirloom ring was on her finger. Her hair was freshly washed and loose around her face and shoulders. It was unnatural and uncomfortable, but she could hardly show up at the First Order looking like a scavenger from Jakku. Rey wondered which poor resistance recruit was now wearing her old boots, which had been traded for a pair of black ones in Rey's size.

“All right. Let me look at both of you one last time. I don't know when I'll see you again,” Leia said.

Finn was waiting on the speeder to take them back to Ben's ship. Leia touched the hole in Ben's tunic. He'd put his undershirt on backwards to better hide it.

“May the force be with you both,” she said at last.

They held onto Leia's gaze for as long as possible. Rey cried when she hugged Finn goodbye. She then stood staring into the dark woods with Ben, trying to imagine what the future held. Rey had never really felt she belonged on the resistance base, despite her friendships and her fondness for Leia. She certainly did not belong on a First Order ship, either. The _Supremacy_ was no place for a hot-headed, messy scavenger girl who often spoke before she thought. Perhaps she would be more of a hinderance than a help to Ben.

“Don't worry. I'll be with you,” Ben said, as if he'd read her mind. She turned and looked up at him.

“I know. Let's go,” she said.

Rey could not help feeling a little more confident striding toward the ship with her black cape unfurling behind her.

When Ben docked the ship back in its hanger where the journey to Exogol began, Rey held her breath. She kept holding it until Ben helped her down from the ship, his hard expression daring anyone to ask questions. Nobody said a word. Ben escorted Rey from the hanger silently. Only one stormtrooper was bold enough to turn his head to watch them pass. They did not get far down the corridor before they heard the sound of footsteps approaching from around the corner.

General Hux appeared, followed by a large number of stormtroopers. He stopped in front of Ben. The two men stood nearly nose-to-nose. Hux's face was screwed into an expression of loathing but he seemed unwilling to say anything as he slowly turned an unflattering shade of pink that clashed with his orange hair.

“What is...” Hux began, but quickly corrected himself.

He cleared his throat.

“Supreme Leader, I have been trying to contact you for the past two days. There has been a... development.”

Hux paused and sneered at Rey.

“We can discuss the matter after the prisoner has been secured,” Hux said.

Hux motioned to his guards and they moved toward Rey. Ben held up his hand, and they froze before he had to use the force against them.

“Prisoner?” Ben asked, sounding so much like Kylo Ren that Rey got chills.

He removed his arm from Rey's, wrapping it around her waist instead.

“She is no prisoner. She is my wife,” Ben said.

“The _scavenger girl_?!” Hux exclaimed, looking almost purple now. “You can't be – ”

Ben's hand twitched, and Hux choked on his next words, which were lost to a subsequent fit of coughing.

“As I was saying, this is my wife. You will address her as High Counselor,” Ben said.

Hux pulled himself together and straightened up to look Ben in the eye. Hatred poured off of him, but all he said was, “Yes, Supreme Leader.”

Hux stepped aside and the stormtroopers followed suit.

“I'll meet you in an hour to discuss the latest developments,” Ben said.

“Yes. Supreme Leader.”

Ben and Rey continued down the corridor. When they stopped again, it took Rey a moment to realize they were standing outside the Supreme Leader's quarters.

Ben ushered her in and shut the door behind him. He immediately removed his gloves, tossing them aside before shrugging off his cape.

“Hux will be our biggest problem,” he said, removing his tunic jacket next.

He stared at the hole in it, then tossed it aside as well.

“What does the High Counselor do?” Rey asked him.

Ben smirked and said, “She offers counsel to the Supreme Leader, and keeps him from turning back to the dark side in order to teach Hux a well-deserved lesson.”

Rey was concerned, despite his joking manner.

“Are you serious?” she asked, grabbing his shoulders and turning him toward her.

He laughed and kissed her.

“Not at all,” he said.

“You force-choked him,” Rey said.

“Just a little,” Ben said.

Rey gave him a hard look as she unclasped her cape and removed it.

“They must not suspect anything,” he reminded her. “If they stop fearing the Supreme Leader, our plan will fail.”

“I understand, but I don't like it,” Rey said.

Even as the words left her mouth, she knew it was a half-truth. Part of her did like watching him shut Hux up with barely the twitch of a finger, and that same part would not much mind if the Supreme Leader force-choked Hux out of existence one day.

Ben gathered his discarded clothes and walked to his closet. He disappeared inside and came out without his undershirt. Rey stared at his bare torso, which was bruised in a few places from his fight with Chewie. He was holding a fresh shirt, but before he could put it on, Rey went over and took it from his hands.

He smiled as Rey touched his arms, then gently ran her fingers over his bruises, counting them to herself. He waited until she reached for his shoulders and rose up on her toes, then he kissed her again.

Eventually, Rey let him finish getting dressed in a new jacket and cape. She laughed as he fussed with his hair in the mirror.

“What?” he asked.

“Fixing your hair for Hux?” she asked.

“Not just for Hux,” he said. “You're coming with me to this meeting.”

“What? No, I'm not,” Rey protested. “I just got here. It's too soon!”

“Put your High Counselor cape back on, sweetheart, we're going to be late,” he said, looking amused with himself.

“Ben! No... I can't.” 

He pulled on his gloves.

“Yes, you can,” he said calmly.

Rey crossed her arms. He tilted his head and looked at her, then reached out to tip her chin up for a long kiss. Rey was about to tell him that was an unfair way to win an argument, but he spoke first.

“Please, come with me,” he said. “I need you there to remind me why I'm still acting like I give a damn about the First Order. Otherwise, I might throw Hux through a wall.”

“What if _I_ throw Hux through a wall?” she asked.

“Then you'll have to answer to the Supreme Leader,” he said.

“Oh? Well, I'm not afraid of him,” said Rey.

She kissed him deeply to prove it, and for the first time he was not gentle in his response, but eager and hungry. The cool leather of his gloved hand pressed into the nape of her neck for a moment. Then, he straightened up.

“So, you'll come?” he asked.

Rey put on her cape.


	9. Our Lady of the First Order

When Rey and Ben arrived to meet Hux he was waiting in the room with two stormtroopers standing guard at the door. After glaring at first Ben, then at Rey, Hux pulled up a map on the holo display in front of them. He jabbed his finger at the projection a few times, navigating a map, then crossed his arms and looked at Ben.

“Do you see the problem?” he asked.

Ben walked closer to the display and squinted.

“Something is on fire,” he said. “Where?”

“That is our primary nutrient facility,” Hux said.

“More defectors?” Ben asked.

“No,” Hux said.

He jabbed at the projection again and zoomed out to show the entire planet.

“The whole thing is on fire! Every facility. This is a planet-wide rebellion. We must act swiftly to crush it.”

“Is the resistance responsible?” Ben asked.

“That is yet to be determined. Of course, if we had made sure the resistance was wiped out, there would be no question of who is responsible.”

Ben fixed Hux with such a stony look of warning that Hux immediately stopped talking.

“Withdraw all First Order presence from the planet,” Ben said.

Hux stared at him. After a moment, he said, “And?”

“And what?” Ben asked dangerously.

Hux was not deterred by his tone.

“What repercussions will there be for this rebellious planet?” he asked. “First Order rule of law mandates – ”

“I _am_ the First Order!” Ben exploded, banging his fist on the nearest panel.

Hux grimaced and stared at the opposite wall.

“Perhaps we should ask _Our Lady of the First Order_. Surely you did not bring her here to be a mere decoration.”

With a taunting sneer, Hux waited. Rey noticed one of the stormtroopers turn to briefly look at her.

“There's no need for a show of force,” Rey said. “Leave them to the consequences of their actions. How long can they survive without the First Order? Make them an example. You either work with the First Order, or you are cut off from the rest of the galaxy.”

Hux continued to sneer, and started to reply.

“Your opin-”

“I told you to address her as High Counselor,” Ben interrupted.

“ _High Counselor_ ,” Hux said. “Seeing as how you should be imprisoned and awaiting execution for the assassination of the previous Supreme Leader- ”

“That's enough, Hux,” Ben said, and Rey wondered if Hux could also sense that Ben had gathered the force toward him in case Hux needed a stronger reprimand.

“Snoke is irrelevant. I am your Supreme Leader.”

Ben beckoned Rey to his side.

“This is not the scavenger, Rey from Jakku, who dreamed of becoming a Jedi. Do you want to know who she really is?” Ben asked.

With a dubious expression, Hux asked, “Who is she, then?”

“She is the heir of Palpatine,” Ben revealed, and Rey felt his hand tighten on her waist, giving her a reassuring squeeze. “She has accepted her destiny. We will be an unstoppable force.”

Rey had nearly forgotten about her heritage. It was still difficult to believe. Hux continued to look skeptical.

“Her? The heir of _Emperor Palpatine_?” he asked. “Preposterous!”

Hux gave a little laugh, but quickly sobered as Ben stared at him.

“It's true. I saw visions of it,” Ben said darkly. “When I went to Exogol, it was confirmed. She has taken her rightful place on the dark side of the force and renounced her past actions. Together we will lead the First Order to true greatness.”

Ben looked at Rey and winked, unbeknownst to Hux. She smiled in what she hoped was a convincingly wicked manner and kissed him, to the sound of Hux scoffing. Ben prolonged the kiss long enough to thoroughly annoy Hux, who finally left the room.

“Are you certain she won't decide to kill you and name herself Empress?” he huffed as he went.

Rey pulled away once Hux was gone and saw that Ben was grinning at her.

“This is going to be fun,” he said.

Rey remembered her vision of Ben and herself on the throne of the Supreme Leader and wondered for a moment how literal it would turn out to be. They went back to his quarters – their quarters. Rey looked at the heirloom ring on her hand. She was not Rey from Jakku anymore. She had found her past and she had killed it. There was only the future to worry about now, and the future was hopeful and bright.

This time after entering the room they stripped off their First Order garb with urgency, and it would remain strewn on the floor of the stark, sterile bedroom until morning. Rey woke up to the half-dimmed artificial sun lights beginning to mimic a sunrise. She heard a noise from the next room. Sitting up abruptly, she saw that Ben was still asleep beside her.

For a moment, Rey sat smiling at his broad back as it slowly rose and fell. Then she heard another clinking noise. She grabbed Ben's undershirt off the floor and pulled it over her head. It was long enough to touch her thighs. Rey peeked into the next room and came face-to-face with a cleaning droid.

“Oh!” she exclaimed.

Ben was up and on his feet in seconds.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

 _I did not realize there was a visitor, sir_ , said the droid.

“She's not a visitor, JAN-0. She's my wife,” Ben said.

The droid looked at Rey and then back at Ben, whose expression changed from groggy concern to a slow smile as he spoke.

_Noted. Do you require any changes to the cleaning schedule, sir?_

“No, that's not necessary,” Ben said.

“So that's why it's so clean in here,” Rey said. “The floors are so shiny.”

“You don't like it?” Ben asked in amusement.

“It's strange,” Rey said.

Ben looked down at her.

“You stole my shirt,” he said.

Rey hugged herself.

“You have plenty of them,” she said.

He scooped Rey up off the ground, then fell back onto the bed with her.

“We'll get you some clothes of your own,” he said.

“From where?” Rey asked, realizing she had no idea how things were done in the First Order, let alone on a military ship.

“The droids can make almost anything you need,” he said.

“I don't know how I feel about that,” Rey said. “Using the First Order's resources to get some new clothes.”

Ben sighed and rubbed her arm.

“You have to look the part. It won't be for long,” he said.

“How long?”

“A few weeks. Maybe a month.”

It was Rey's turn to sigh.

“When this is over, I want to go somewhere green and beautiful. I want to disappear,” she said.

A look of longing came over his face as he gently pulled her down beside him.

“I want to disappear with you,” he said.

“You don't want to rule the galaxy?” she teased.

“I want to be free,” he said. “It feels so close. As close as you.”

He put his arm over her and pressed his hand into her back, drawing her a little closer.

“I can't believe you're here with me,” he said.

“I can't, either,” said Rey. “Visions can be misleading.”

She stared at him, marveling that she was lying in Ben's arms after she'd spent so many months denying her desire to take his hand. He'd offered it so many times – Kylo's hand, she had thought – but it was Ben the whole time. Kylo Ren was Snoke's failed weapon, an empty mask, a suit of dark armor, and Ben had been begging her to join him so he could take it off at last and become something new. Together.

“Tell me about the force dyad. What is it, exactly?” she asked.

He smiled and scooted even closer, tucking his chin down to better look into her eyes.

“Two that are one... our souls are connected to each other, as we are connected to the force. We give each other another way to access the force. So it flows four-fold through us, entwined like a knot. It makes us stronger.”

“A knot in the force, and we're in the middle,” Rey said. “All tangled up together.”

“Exactly,” he said, tangling his legs with hers.

When they later left the bedroom, the rest of the rooms were pristine again, and JAN-0 was gone.

“I don't like it here,” Rey said. “It's so... clean.”

Ben laughed.

“What are you, a sand crab?” he asked. “You want to live in dirt?”

“No, I just mean, it's too empty. Too perfect.”

Ben shrugged.

“So, make it less perfect. What do you want to change?” he asked.

Rey looked around. She walked from room to room, taking in her temporary home. When she entered his enormous walk-in closet, which was really an entire dressing room, she stopped and looked at the shrunken and burnt mask on a black pillar.

“That has got to be the first to go,” she said.

Ben stared at it as if he wanted to argue.

“Let the past die,” she reminded him.

“Luke's saber,” he said.

Rey went to retrieve it from her meager bag of belongings and handed it to him. Ben lifted the green lightsaber and paused. Then, with a forceful swing, he brought it down on the mask and shattered the pillar to bits, scattering beads of glass across the floor.

“Now, do the rest,” Rey said, pointing to the rest of Kylo Ren's trophies.

When he was done, they left the mess behind and went to find some breakfast in the kitchen.

“I'm surprised you don't have a droid cooking for you,” she said. “Supreme Leader.”

“There is such a droid, if you want,” he said.

“No,” she laughed. “I think I can manage.”

It became clear that Rey could not manage because she did not know the first thing about a real kitchen or food that did not come in a pouch. Ben left her with a snack and showed her how to call the droid. He was going to a meeting of the Order's generals, and hoped to hear no news of the resistance yet. Rey eventually did call for the droid. Moments later, she heard it roll up to the outer door and enter the passcode.

“How may I be of service, Our Lady?” asked the droid upon entering.

Rey laughed.

“I'm not a lady,” she said. “I'm... the High Counselor.”

“Our Lady is the High Counselor,” it said. “How may I be of service?”

“I'd like some breakfast, please,” Rey said.

“I will make Our Lady a savory breakfast, if that is acceptable,” said the droid.

“That's fine,” Rey said. “What's your name?”

The droid stopped opening drawers for a moment.

“I am ND-8,” it said.

Rey and ND-8 saw a lot of one another over the next two weeks. JAN-0 was shy and perhaps not impressed with Rey after the mess they'd made in Ben's dressing room.

Ben and Rey were anxious for time to pass. It was too risky to leave the _Supremacy_. Ben was certain that if they did, Hux would use the opportunity to seize power. So, they were trapped there in a delicate dance with Hux and his sympathizers.

“Come with me to the throne room,” Ben said one morning, three weeks into their imprisonment.

“Now? Why?” Rey asked, hardly daring to hope it was anything important.

“We are going to send out the broadcast. It's time to introduce you to the rest of the First Order, and the galaxy,” he said.

“Introduce me?” Rey asked.

“Yes, so that the resistance will know that it is time to rise against the First Order,” he said.

“Really? They're ready?” Rey asked.

“I hope so,” Ben said.

Rey dressed in her new clothes – a heavy cape that reached her ankles, a flowing tunic cinched to her waist with a black sash, and thick, crisp black pants. She pulled on her new black boots and her gloves and went to the mirror to pull her hair back into her usual buns.

“Allow me to be of service,” said a droid, and Rey jumped.

“Oh, I didn't see you there,” she said.

It was yet another one of the Supreme Leader's droids, the one responsible for cutting Ben's hair.

“Thank you, but I don't need a haircut,” Rey told the droid.

It was not true. Her hair was uneven and longer than it had ever been.

“Then, allow me to assist Our Lady in choosing a style befitting her status,” said the droid.

Rey sighed and looked at her messy buns.

“Fine. Go ahead,” she said.

The droid led her to the barber's chair in the bathroom and began to work. Rey could hear scissors snipping at the ends of her hair, but she did not argue with the droid. After much brushing and styling and tugging on her hair, the droid completed the task.

“Does Our Lady approve?” the droid asked, holding up a mirror to her face.

Rey's hair was slicked back into a high bun atop her head, which was encircled by a single, perfectly-woven braid. Her usual loose tendrils of baby hair had disappeared, making her cheekbones look sharper. The neatness of the bun and the braid reminded Rey of Leia.

“That will do. Thank you,” she said.

Ben came out of the dressing room and smiled his slow, crooked smile at her.

“You clean up well,” he said.

“Only when there's a droid to help me,” Rey said, touching her hair.

They walked to the throne room together, and halfway there a group of three stormtroopers stopped in front of them in the corridor. After a moment of hesitation, the trooper in the lead gave a small bow.

“Excuse us, Supreme Leader,” he said.

Ben nodded and they walked past.

“Good day, Our Lady... of the Resistance,” said another stormtrooper mumbled as Rey passed.

She stopped.

“What did you say?” she asked.

“Good day,” the stormtrooper repeated.

“No, the other part,” Rey said.

“Our Lady,” said the stormtrooper.

“Her title is High Counselor,” Ben said, turning on his heel to face the stormtrooper.

“Yes, sir,” said the stormtrooper. “Good day, High Counselor.”

The stormtroopers continued on their way, as did Ben and Rey.

“What was that about?” Rey asked. “Why are they calling me 'Our Lady'? I thought the droids were only doing it because you told them to as joke?”

“I don't know,” was all Ben said. He looked worried.

The throne room was empty except for a handful of guards.

“Leave us. Close the door,” Ben told the guards.

Ben went to a control panel and adjusted a few settings on the display. A set of lights illuminated the Supreme Leader's throne. A holo panel appeared reflecting the scene as it would be recorded.

Ben walked around the display and reached for Rey's hand. They walked toward the throne of the Supreme Leader together. He led Rey to stand in front of the throne, and they positioned themselves inside the frame of the display.

“Ready, High Counselor?” Ben asked.

Rey nodded. Ben raised his hand and used the force to start the recording.

“This is your Supreme Leader, speaking to you from the throne room of the _Supremacy_. This broadcast goes out to the entire galaxy. In the past weeks, an alliance has been forged.”

Ben looked at Rey and raised her hand, still clasped in his.

“Two powerful dynasties have come together in the force – the marriage of your Supreme Leader, heir of Vader, and your High Counselor, heir of Palpatine. Together, we will lead the galaxy into a new era. There is only one way forward. Accept your destiny, as your leaders have done, and join us. The past is dead, along with those who cling to it. There is only the future. Our future.”

Rey kept staring solemnly into the display in front of them, though she could hear Ben's voice morph quickly into Kylo Ren's as he spoke, and part of her desperately wanted to turn and make sure it was really Ben looking back at her. Perhaps he knew this, because he squeezed her hand.

Ben stopped the recording.

“Are we sending it now?” Rey asked, still staring straight ahead.

“We're sending it now,” Ben said, and lifted his hand.

The display blinked and beeped a few times.

“That's it?” Rey asked.

“That's it.”

Ben collapsed into the Supreme Leader's throne.

“So we just... wait?” she asked.

He looked up at her and Rey saw how tired and worn he was from playing the role of the Supreme Leader. As if guided by her past visions, she moved closer and touched his face with her black-gloved hand. He closed his eyes and Rey felt the tension in his jaw disappear. She kissed him, until he finally stood up and lifted her off the ground in a tight embrace.

“Let's get out of here. I don't want to be around when Hux hears that broadcast,” he said, pressing his forehead against hers for a moment before putting her back on her feet.

They walked to the door, but it opened on its own. The stormtrooper guards stood facing Ben and Rey, weapons loft.

“Our Lady of the Resistance. Supreme Leader Ben. If you want live, follow us,” one of them said.

She jerked her blaster to the left and began walking ahead of them. The second stormtrooper followed. Ben seemed to be just as surprised by this development as Rey.


	10. The Rebellion

Ben and Rey followed the guard down the corridor, ready to defend themselves at any moment. The stormtroopers led them to a nondescript door in the wall that looked like it might be a janitorial closet.

Once they were all inside, squeezed into the narrow hallway with the door shut, the first stormtrooper removed her helmet and looked at Rey and Ben in awe.

“It's safe to talk now,” she said. “Follow me.”

“Where are we going?” Rey asked.

“We're delivering you to the resistance before the rebellion starts.”

“Which rebellion?” Rey asked.

“The _Supremacy_ rebellion,” said the stormtrooper.

Rey looked at Ben in shock. The second stormtrooper removed his helmet.

“It starts today,” he said.

They were led on a winding, claustrophobic path through the bowels of the ship, until at last they came to a ladder that disappeared in a dark, unlit section that was so cold there was frost covering the walls.

At the end of the ladder, they dropped through a hatch from which dim light emanated. As Ben disappeared through the hatch, Rey heard cheering. She followed and dropped down from the ladder with her mouth agape.

They were standing in what appeared to be an enormous defunct storage bay, surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of unmasked stormtroopers.

“Our Lady of the Resistance!” yelled someone, and more cheers erupted.

“How did this happen? When did this happen?” Rey asked no one in particular. The stormtrooper who had led them there replied.

“It's been happening for many, many months,” she said. “Ever since we heard of FN-2187 joining the resistance, taking down Phasma, flying the Millennium Falcon... it's been growing. Our own rebellion.”

“Finn! Does he know about you? You've been in contact with the resistance?” Rey asked.

The stormtrooper nodded.

“Yes, Finn. He is coming to your rescue, Our Lady.”

“We don't need to be rescued,” Rey said, instinctively touching Luke's lightsaber. “We will fight with you.”

“No,” another stormtrooper said as he shook his head. “You must leave now. General Hux has planned to have the Supreme Leader shot down the moment he leaves the _Supremacy_. If you are not killed with him, you are to be executed for the assassination of Snoke.”

“I'd like to see Hux _try_!” Rey said indignantly.

“Please, go with FN-3125. We have a scheduled transport ship in which you should be able to leave undetected. It cannot make the jump to hyperspace, but you will meet Finn on the surface of Rehm-Nah,” said the stormtrooper. “This is not your fight. The resistance needs you.”

“Right,” Rey said.

They had planned to be 'captured' by the resistance eventually. It was all happening faster than she'd imagined. Rey and Ben allowed themselves to be led to the transport ship and tucked away among the storage containers.

“Did you know anything about this?” Rey asked.

“No,” Ben said.

“I hope that means Hux doesn't, either,” Rey said.

“Hux has been in denial about the stormtrooper defectors for a long time,” Ben said. “He won't see it coming.”

The ship landed and they got to their feet. Muffled voices outside traveled from the front of the ship to the back. Rey and Ben crouched behind the containers and waited. The back door lifted.

“Rey?”

“Finn?”

“Hurry, get out of there. We don't have much time!” Finn said.

Rey and Ben climbed out of the ship and followed Finn through a suspiciously vacant hanger. Outside it was dark on the planet, and raining. Finn led them through thick vegetation with leaves the size of speeders towering high on impossibly thin stalks above their heads.

“You brought the _Falcon_?” Ben asked incredulously, when they saw the ship.

“It's the best ship we have,” Finn said, shrugging.

They boarded hastily and found Chewie inside waiting for them. Finn hopped into the seat beside him in the cockpit.

“Let's go, Chewie,” he said.

“Where's Poe?” Rey asked.

“Getting ready to bring the backup to the rebellion,” Finn said. “Once I deliver you to the General, I'll be right there with him.”

“What's the plan?” Rey asked.

“I'll let the General fill you in,” was all Finn said.

“How is it that nobody was in that hanger?” Rey asked.

Finn turned to grin at her as the _Falcon_ lifted off the ground.

“I used the force! You know – Jedi mind tricks,” he said, then laughed.

Soon, they were back on Ajan Kloss. The sight of the planet brought tears to Rey's eyes. It was the closest thing to home she had, the first place she'd had Ben by her side. Yet, it was not a home. It was a military base. They landed in the midst of frantic activity. Everyone was preparing for what would be either their final stand or their ultimate victory over the First Order.

“Leia!” Rey shouted, and ran to the General.

Leia's face was solemn, but she let a small smile pull at her mouth for Rey and Ben. She embraced them both tightly.

“Tell us where you need us,” Rey begged.

After weeks of isolation in the cold vacuum of the First Order's _Supremacy_ , she was aching to launch herself into action.

“I'm going wherever you'll be,” Ben said to Leia, and he punctuated his declaration by igniting his lightsaber, the hilt restored and the kyber crystal healed. He knelt in front of her with the brilliant white blade of his cross-guard saber at his side. The wet grass hissed as dew turned to steam.

“You're my son, not my bodyguard,” Leia said, placing her hand briefly on his shoulder. “Nice work on the saber, Ben.”

He nodded and stood up, putting his saber away. Leia looked over at the _Falcon._

“As much as I long to have you by my side for this fight, I need you somewhere else,” she said.

Ben followed her gaze and stared at the _Falcon_.

“Chewie needs a copilot,” Leia said. “Lando was going to do it, but he's been away gathering more forces. He'll lead the attacks on the First Order's secondary strongholds.”

Rey listened with a rising sense of tension. She realized she was fighting the force back, but why? What was it trying to tell her? She closed her eyes and did her best to ignore the shouts of the resistance members around her scrambling to prepare for the fight.

_The noise of the resistance base faded into cries and wails. Rey saw wide eyes and tears in the dark, and small hands clinging to nurse droids._

“We can't take the _Falcon_ into the fight with the resistance,” she said to Ben, once it became clear.

Leia peered at her without comment, then her eyes became far away. After a moment, she nodded.

“Rose,” Leia said, at the same time as Rey spoke.

“Where is Rose?”

They found her working on one of the X-Wings.

“Rose, there's something we have to do,” Rey said.

Rose wiped her hands and put down her tools.

“Rey! Ben! I'm so glad you made it back!” Rose hugged Rey and gave Ben and uncertain look before giving him a welcoming pat on the shoulder.

“So, ah... what do we have to do?” Rose asked.

“We're going to get the children off the _Supremacy_ ,” Rey said.

“There are children on that ship?” Rose asked in horror. She looked at Ben.

“Did you know?” she asked him.

“It was Hux's pet project, but the initiative was put on indefinite hold when I became Supreme Leader. The children used to be trained elsewhere, with camps on various planets run by the First Order. It would be a bold move for Hux to bring them to the _Supremacy_ after the program ended,” Ben said.

“It never ended,” Rey said confidently. “They're on the ship. I felt their fear. They can hear the rebellion fight. They're being held captive by Hux's loyalists somewhere on that ship.”

“It's a big ship,” Rose said. “How will we find them?”

“That's why we need you,” Rey said.

“Me? Wouldn't Ben know more about the First Order's ships?” Rose asked.

Rey shook her head and said, “Ben can helps us figure out where they might be, but you have to help us find them. I saw it just a moment ago. It is you who must help us find the children and get them on the _Falcon_.”

Rose stared at Rey, then simply said, “Okay.”

“Are we really taking the _Falcon_ back to the _Supremacy_?” Ben asked.

“It's what I saw,” Rey said.

He pushed his hair back from his face and sighed.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” he said.

“Well, I have a good feeling about it,” Rey countered. “Maybe you should listen to the for-”

Ben kissed her and Rose squeaked.

“We're taking the _Falcon_ to the _Supremacy_ ,” Ben said. “The High Counselor has spoken.”

Rey made a face.

“Don't you mean Our Lady of the Resistance?” she asked.

Ben kissed her again, wrapping his arms tightly around her and picking her up off the ground.

“All right, you two,” Leia said, smiling at them. “It seems you have a mission. Give us time to create a distraction. May the force be with you.”

Rey felt alive with purpose. She entered the cockpit of the _Falcon_ just in time to see Chewie reach over and mess up Ben's hair.

“You look kind of terrifying dressed like that,” Rose told Rey. “I love it.”

Rey laughed and said, “Thanks, I think.”

_You look good, kid_ , said Chewie.

“Okay, but the cape is going to have to go,” Rey said, taking it off. “And this hair... it _hurts!_ ”

She removed her gloves and tried to figure out how to take the bun down without ripping her hair out, but whatever the droid had done was incomprehensible to Rey's searching fingers.

“Here, let me help,” Rose said.

Her tiny, nimble fingers quickly dissected the braid and bun.

“Oh, that's so much better,” Rey said, running her fingers through her loose hair.

“Well, if we getting comfortable...” Ben said, and he tossed his cape over the back of his seat, removed his gloves, and stretched his fingers.

_You still look like the Supreme Leader_ , Chewie said.

“All right. Fine,” Ben said.

He stood up and took off his heavy military tunic.

“Happy now?” he asked Chewie.

_Better,_ said Chewie.

They all sat anxiously in the silence, waiting for the resistance to leave the base. Rey left the cockpit and paced around the cabin. Rose followed her.

“So this is it. The end of the First Order,” Rose said.

Rey nodded.

“Wow,” Rose touched her necklace. “I wish Paige was here to see it.”

“She knows,” Rey said. “Nobody's ever really gone. Somewhere in the universe, her spirit knows.”

“Did the force tell you that?” Rose asked.

“It didn't have to,” Rey said.

Rey got out Luke's lightsaber and began swinging it expertly, turning, crouching and swapping hands as she went. Rose stepped back into the doorway and watched, still holding onto her necklace.

“Ready?” called Ben.

“Let's go!” Rey called back, grinning. It felt good to have a mission.

They returned to Rehm-Nah, where the battle for the galaxy was now underway, raging both inside the _Supremacy_ and around it. The planet was surrounded by the hundreds of ships of every imaginable shape and size, some ancient and some shining and new.

“Whoa!” Rey exclaimed. “Is this all the resistance?!”

“It's just... people...” said Rose. “The galaxy!”

“Do you think our broadcast convinced them to mobilize? This is incredible!” Rey said.

“Maybe,” said Ben.

He navigated the _Falcon_ through the crowded battlefield of ships, and as they went they picked up chatter from many of the pilots, cheering them on, cheering for the _Falcon_ as it hurdled toward the _Supremacy_. Rey wondered if they would still be cheering if they knew who was flying the ship.

TIE fighter after TIE fighter launched from the First Order ships, but nowhere near as many as should have been deployed for such a large scale attack. The stormtrooper rebellion had proven to be an effective disruption behind First Order lines.

“Rey!” Ben shouted.

Rey and Rose were manning the laser cannons.

“On it!” Rey shouted back, doing her best to target the TIEs on their tail.

“YES!” Rose shouted a moment later, and Rey echoed her when she took out another ship.

Four more TIEs swept past, but before they could turn and chase the _Falcon,_ another resistance ship shot them down.

“We've got backup!” Rey yelled.

“Good, we're going to need it!” said Ben. “I don't want any TIEs following us back to that old hanger.”

“What if it's not open?” Rey asked.

“That's where the force dyad comes in,” he said.

Finally, they had a moment without anyone giving chase, and Ben punched it toward the _Supremacy_. Rey scrambled out of her seat and got to Ben just in time to grab his shoulder and hold her hand out toward the enormous, closed door to the hanger from which they'd escaped earlier. Slowly, it rose for them, and Ben landed the _Falcon_ neatly inside. The hanger was empty.

“Close the door, close the door,” Ben said, holding his hand out as well to help her.

The hanger went dark as the door closed on them.

“Well, here we are,” Rey said, letting out the breath she'd been holding.

Rose appeared a moment later holding a flashlight and a headlamp, which she handed to Chewie.

“Here you go, buddy, you might need this,” she said.

_Thanks,_ Chewie said.

He attached it to his arm instead of putting it over his head. Rey and Ben used their lightsabers to illuminate their way. It was eerily quiet below the ship in the abandoned decks, but they could hear and feel the reverberations of the battle going on above them.

“So, uh, does anyone know where we are going?” Rose asked.

Rey looked at Ben. He closed his eyes. It was the first time Rey had seen him meditate in the force.

“We're going to the third level,” he said. “The children are below the kitchens in a restricted block. Only droids in or out. I can get us there, but we'll be forced into the main halls eventually. The only other way in is the droid tunnels, and we won't fit through them.”

Chewie handed Rose another blaster.

“Ready?” Ben asked.

“Ready,” said Rey.

_Ready_.

They began their climb up through the ship, back the way they came before, but this time they entered the corridor on a lower deck. Ben slowly opened the door, and Rey was relieved that no sounds of a fight could be heard. They spilled into the hallway and cautiously made their way through the ship, blasters and lightsabers aloft.

Boots on the ground made them freeze in their tracks. Row after row of stormtroopers passed by at the end of the hall. No one noticed them until the last few walked past. Ben stopped the blast before Rey even realized one of the stormtroopers had shot at them. Before the stormtrooper could make a sound, Ben dragged him down the hall toward them with the force. When Ben finally released the blaster shot into the ceiling, the stormtrooper fell over and slumped against the wall. They ran around the next corner and came upon a few more stormtroopers wearing helmets.

“Is that a Wookiee?” said one, raising his blaster.

“Is that... the Supreme Leader?” asked another, and his blaster wavered.

Before anyone could speak or act, someone shouted, “Drop the weapons!”

A group of rebelling stormtroopers filed into the other end of the hall, pointing their own blasters at the stormtroopers wearing helmets.

“This is your chance to join the rebellion, will you take it?” asked one of the men.

“We're not rebel scum!” was the vehement reply, and the stormtrooper who said it took a shot at the group.

He was hit with blast of returned fire and groaned before falling face first to the ground. The rebels turned their attention to Ben, Rey, Chewie, and Rose.

“Supreme Leader? I thought we sent you away from this ship,” said a woman with blood running down her cheek.

“General Organa sent us back. We have a mission,” Rey said.

“We're here to save the children,” said Rose.

“Children?” asked the stormtrooper, and the others murmured.

“They're keeping the children here now?” asked someone else.

“Where are they? We want to help.”

They moved forward as a group, with a few stormtroopers up front with Ben and Rey, and the rest behind covering their backs. The journey was tense and quiet until they reached the hall leading to the restricted block. Suddenly, they were met with blaster shots. Ben and Rey deflected and held much of the initial fire, which gave the rebels a chance to return fire.

Rey followed Ben and his shining white lightsaber into the fray, making quick work of the guards blocking them from reaching the children, whom she could sense strongly now, screaming and crying out. Perhaps she was actually hearing them now, even over the sounds of blasters and humming lightsabers.

More blaster-shots erupted behind them. A second band of helmet-wearing guards descended from behind. The rebel stormtroopers held their ground, and seemed to be much better shots than their First-Order-loyal peers. Perhaps it was because they had removed their helmets and could see more clearly.

Two of the guards attempted to escape into an elevator. Ben waited until the doors shut, then he held out his hand and slowly squeezed his fingers together as if crushing something inside his palm. A loud screech was followed by a metallic crunch, and the elevator doors bent slightly inward.

“They can still radio for reinforcements,” Rey said anxiously.

“With no working elevator it will take them a while to get here,” Ben said. “Let's get the kids and get out of here. Look for a droid entrance.”

“Here!” said a stormtrooper, pointing to a half-size door in the wall.

“Where's the real entrance?” asked someone. “Nobody can fit through there.”

“I can!” Rose said. “I can fit, if we can get it open!”


	11. Lost Kids

“Can you open it?” Rey asked Ben.

He stared at the keypad panel, then held his hand out over it.

“Can the force tell him the passcode?” asked Rose, in awe.

“No,” Rey whispered.

The panel began smoking, then with a sputtering of sparks it was disabled. Ben moved his hand to the door. With a loud click, it flew open.

“Give her another blaster,” said one of the stormtroopers.

“I don't need another blaster, I need a free hand,” Rose said. “How long is this passage, do you think?”

“It shouldn't be far,” Ben said.

Rey watched Rose disappear.

“I'm going with her,” said Rey, lightsaber in hand, preparing to army crawl through the tunnel. “I think I can make it.”

She pulled herself along claustrophobic passage and could hear Rose scrambling through ahead of her with much greater ease.

“Rose, I'm behind you,” she said.

“There's another door up here,” Rose said. “Do you think you can do that trick Ben did to the last one?”

“I'll try,” Rey said.

She caught up to Rose, who pushed herself flat against the side of the passage so that Rey could see the door. There was no keypad. Rey stretched her hand toward the door, where there was a small lock. She twisted her wrist slowly. Finally, the lock turned over. The door immediately opened. Rose and Rey peered through cautiously.

“It's quiet in there. I don't see anyone,” Rose whispered, holding her blaster out in front of her face.

Rose began to climb through the opening.

“Be careful,” Rey said.

Rose scanned the room, then hopped out and motioned for Rey to follow. The empty room looked like a medical bay. There was a cold storage unit in one corner filled with vials and row after row of injections. Rey went over to stare through the door.

“Is that... blood?” she asked, horrified at the sight.

“Yes,” Rose said. “Come on. Let's find those kids.”

“There's got to be another way in here. Hux would never fit through that tunnel,” Rey said, looked around the room. There was only one door out, and thankfully it was standard size.

They crept out of the room together, weapons at the ready. The sound of a child's cry suddenly echoed through the wall.

“Did you hear that?” Rey whispered, uncertain if she was about to have another vision.

“Yes,” Rose said. “This way.”

They had come to a small rotunda, with three narrow routes forward. As they walked, the sounds of crying grew louder and more frequent. Then, they heard the unmistakable robotic voice of a nurse droid, speaking in a comforting cadence as if to a small child.

Rey and Rose came to a third closed door and stood listening.

“A child of the First Order does not cry,” said a droid. “FR-9982, you are the oldest. You must show the others how to act.”

Rose scowled fiercely at the door and began looking for a way to open it. Rey placed a hand on her shoulder, asking her to wait. Rey closed her eyes and centered herself in the force. Then, she opened her eyes and nodded at Rose, who pressed her hand to the pad that opened the door.

The door slid open to reveal a group of young children huddled together in a barracks chamber. The walls held the bunks – narrow single pods with sliding clear panels that shut like cages. Perhaps a hundred wide, teary eyes stared back at the two women holding weapons. The nurse droids also froze. Before they could follow whatever programming they'd been given to carry out if discovered by the wrong person, Rose used her blaster to take out the first two, and Rey leapt into action with Luke's lightsaber, incapacitating the rest.

Now the children were screaming in terror. Rey put away her saber and held her hands up.

“It's all right, we're here to help you,” she told them, but most of them were too upset to hear her words.

Rey looked over helplessly at Rose. She had no idea how they were going to get the kids out of there. Getting them all back through the tunnel would take too long.

“Hey... hey!” Rose said soothingly, gesturing gently with both her hands in the air. “Which one of you is FR-9982?”

A boy who was almost a head taller than the rest of the children stepped forward.

“I am FR-9982. Who are you?” he asked.

“I'm Rose,” she said, kneeling next to him. “I'm here to help you. We're going to get you out of here.”

The boy stared at her soberly, though his eyes were red from previous tears.

“Where will you take us?” he asked.

“Somewhere you'll be free,” Rey said. “You'll be able to run and play, and see the sky.”

“What will we play?” the boy asked, rubbing his eyes.

“Oh, I know lots of games,” Rose said. “I can teach you some of them once we get off this ship.”

Rose continued to speak to the boy, and slowly the other children stopped crying and began listening to her as well. Rey closed her eyes and focused on Ben. In seconds, she was with him through the force bond.

“Ben, we have the children but we don't know how to get them out of here,” Rey said.

“How many are there?” he asked.

“At least fifty,” Rey said, looking around the room again.

“There will be backup arriving soon,” Ben said. “Start bringing them back out the way you came.”

“They're so young, Ben, and upset. We'll never make it out in time. We have to try something else.”

He looked at her in surprise.

“You mean...?”

She nodded.

“It will work,” she said. “Go back to the _Falcon_.”

It was his turn to nod, and Rey broke the connection.

“What's going on?” Rose whispered.

Most of the kids were now sitting quietly. Some still cried, but they had stopped screaming in fear. They watched Rey and Rose curiously. The boy who had been talking to Rose, FR-9982, spoke to Rey.

“You killed ND-2D,” he said.

“The droid?” Rey asked.

The boy nodded.

“I'm sorry,” Rey said, realizing the droid might be the boy's only caretaker.

The boy shrugged and said, “It's okay. ND-2D almost killed me once, but the Doctor stopped it.”

“The Doctor?” Rose asked. “Does he live here with you?”

Rose gave Rey a worried look, but the boy shook his head.

“The Doctor is a woman. She doesn't live here. She only comes sometimes, and she makes the droids do things to us.”

The next minutes waiting for Ben to reach back out to her from the _Falcon_ were tense for Rey. He ran into more loyal stormtroopers on the way back. Rey could sense his exhaustion as he led the fight toward the ship. Finally, he was there with her through their bond again, reaching for her with a large, blood-smeared hand. Rey looked up and saw that the blood was coming from a cut over his eye. He was going to terrify the children.

“Okay, ah... take my waist,” she told him.

Ben's hand firmly grasped her waist and pulled her to his side.

“Oh, my god! What's happening?” Rose gasped, as she looked over and saw Ben holding onto Rey.

“Rose, we're getting everyone out. I know this sounds crazy, but it's a force thing. Ben's on the _Falcon_. I'm going to pass the children to him through our force bond.”

“ _Through a_ _force bond?_ That... that does sound crazy,” Rose said, but she turned to the boy beside her.

“FR-9982, will you show the others how to do it? Go take Rey's hand. Don't be afraid. She's going to get you out of here to someplace safe. You're going to be free.”

Hesitantly, the boy approached Rey and placed his small hand into hers. Ben reached over and lifted the boy with one arm, transferring him from Rey's grasp in the barracks to the _Falcon_ through the force bond. When he put the boy down, presumably in the cabin of the _Falcon_ , the boy disappeared from sight.

“He's gone... is that a good thing? Did it work?” Rose asked nervously.

“It worked,” said Rey.

In a manner of minutes, Rose had the children in an orderly line and had managed to convince most of them to take Rey's hand and allow Ben to pick them up off the ground without crying.

“Your turn,” Rey told Rose, when the last child had been transferred.

“This is crazy,” Rose mumbled, taking Rey's hand.

Ben lifted Rose as easily as he had the kids, then reached for Rey. He wrapped her in a tight embrace, lifting her feet up off the floor for a moment. Rey felt the shift in her stomach and after a brief moment of vertigo she was standing in the _Falcon_ with Ben's arms around her.

“Chewie, let's get out of here,” said Ben, letting go of Rey and hurrying to the cockpit.

Chewie gently pushed the children away who were petting and hugging his legs, and followed Ben.

“Where are the rebel stormtroopers?” Rey asked.

“Covering us,” Ben said.

The _Falcon_ rose and exited the hangar. Rey was not prepared for the sight that awaited them as they pulled away from the _Supremacy_. The resistance was winning! There were no more TIE fighters entering the fight and no more cannon fire was coming from the First Order.

“General, this is the _Falcon_. Our mission was a success. We are returning to base,” Ben said.

“Ben, we will meet you there as soon as we can. What is the situation on the _Supremacy_?” Leia asked.

“The rebel stormtroopers have destabilized the ship,” Ben said. “Hux and his commanders have been captured and are being held in the prison cells.”

“Really?” Leia asked. “Then we know our next move. Finn and the group from Kef Bir are waiting for my signal to board.”

Leia paused, and Rey could feel her elation through the force at the triumph of the resistance.

“May the force be with you,” Rey said.

“Thank you. May we meet again soon,” Leia said.

They took the _Falcon_ back to Ajan Kloss, where a skeleton crew of resistance members were holding down the base. The children were fed and taken to one of the barracks. Based on the enthusiasm with which they devoured the meal, the children were used to spartan rations. Most of them slept as soon as they were offered a bed and a blanket. Even though two or three at a time had to share a bed, they did not seem to mind and clung to one another in their sleep.

“What was Hux doing with these kids?” Rose asked, as she, Rey, and Ben finally closed the door to the barracks, leaving a few droids to stand sentry over the children.

“This wasn't the program you tried to end,” Rey told Ben. “He wasn't raising these children to become stormtroopers. It was something else. The boy said there was a doctor – a woman who made the droids hurt them.”

“There was a cold storage unit full of blood,” Rose said, her face going pale as she remembered. “Vials of blood and injections. Experiments.”

“If this was Hux's doing, he managed to hide it from me,” Ben said, looking shocked.

“Those poor kids,” Rose said.

Rose sat down on the ground outside the barracks. Rey joined her, followed by Ben. Nobody spoke for a while.

“Where's Chewie?” asked Rose.

“On the _Falcon_ ,” Ben said. “Probably sleeping. Wookiees like to do that after a successful battle.”

“The kids liked him,” Rose said, smiling to herself.

Rey smiled too, remembering how they had been hanging onto his legs. Ben put his arm around her and Rey let her head rest on his shoulder. Rose lay back on the ground with her arms behind her head, staring at the sky.

They stayed that way for a long time, each lost in their own thoughts, then Ben removed his arm from around Rey and stretched out on his back. Rey curled against him and closed her eyes, finally able to rest.

“They're back,” Rose alerted them, what might have been an hour later.

Rey sat up.

“Leia,” she said, looking up to see the General's ship pass by overhead.

They got up and ran to meet the returning resistance as more ships appeared in the sky and began to land around them. Ben saw Leia disembark and took a few long striding steps toward her before embracing her. Rey thought she heard Leia repeat, “It's over,” a few times.

X-wings began to land, and Rey saw Poe climbing out of his ship. She began running toward him, alongside Rose.

“Poe!” Rey shouted.

Her voice was echoed by another shout.

“Poe!” yelled Finn.

Finn had just landed a First Order freighter ship, and rebel stormtroopers still dressed in their armor were pouring out of the back.

“Finn!” shouted Poe.

Rey and Rose stopped in their tracks and watched their friends sprint toward one another. They slammed together in a jubilant hug, clapping each other's backs as the momentum spun them around. Then, Poe grabbed Finn's face and kissed him, stopping him in his tracks.

“Oh!” Rey exclaimed. “Oh, that makes sense.”

“I knew it!” Rose said, hugging herself as they watched Poe and Finn pull apart and grin at one another. A moment later, Rose and Rey piled onto their embrace.

“We did it! We really did it!” Poe shouted happily, hugging Rose and Rey individually in turn. “The First Order has fallen!”

Poe went back to Finn, putting his arm around him.

“It's a good day,” he said, smiling broadly as he observed the happy chaos around them.

Rose, Poe, and Finn went to find Chewie on the _Falcon_. As they walked, Finn put his arm around Rose's shoulders. Rey snuck a backwards glance at the three of them arm-in-arm as she broke away and went to Ben and Leia.

“Ben told me the children are resting in the barracks,” Leia said. “I must talk to them soon. I want to know who was responsible for ordering and carrying out these apparent experiments.”

Leia's expression was dark and serious, in stark contrast to the celebration going on at the base.

“There is much work to be done,” she said, but a smile formed on her lips. “For now – for today – let us celebrate a hard-won victory.”

Leia put a hand on Ben and Rey's backs and led them into the fray. Not a word was said about the presence of the former Supreme Leader on the base, celebrating with the resistance that day.

Late that night, unable to sleep, Rey walked out to the woods. Ben followed her. They sat on the meditation stump together, back-to-back.

“Be with me,” Rey whispered.

She took a deep breath, one that was mirrored by Ben's back rising against hers.

“Be with me,” Ben echoed.

Another breath. The force flowed through them and around them. For the first time in her life, Rey understood true peace. As they continued to meditate, her spirit was lifted to a dizzying height, and Ben was there with her. When they came back down and the sounds of the woods at night crept back into their consciousness, a voice spoke.

_Ben._

Ben and Rey opened their eyes to see that Luke had appeared before them, and someone else was with him.

“Grandfather?” said Ben.

The force ghost standing with Luke appeared to be too emotional to speak.

_He's proud of you,_ Luke said.

_I can tell him myself,_ the ghost grumbled.

“Grandfather – why did you never answer me? If you can appear now...” Ben trailed off. “Did you not hear me?”

_When you've passed into the force it's difficult – nearly impossible – to appear to someone in the grasp of the dark side. It's hard even to find them in the darkness. I heard you from time to time. I reached out. I offered you what light I could, even if it wasn't my voice._

“ _You_ didn't seem to have a problem finding me,” Ben said to Luke.

_Because I knew you in life_ , Luke said simply.

_Ben would never have known about me at all, if his mother had her way,_ said the other ghost.

He seemed to notice Rey for the first time.

_So this is your other half – a Palpatine!_

The ghost laughed and said, _The universe has strange a sense of humor – but the two of you will bring balance to the force._

“We _will_ bring balance? Have we... not?” Rey asked.

_By destroying Exogol and getting married? No, you have more work to do,_ Luke said, looking amused.

_I really am proud of you, Ben,_ said the other ghost. They disappeared, and Ben sighed.

“Was that... Vader?” Rey asked.

“I think he'd rather go by Anakin Skywalker,” Ben said.

“Right,” Rey said.

Ben scooted around to sit beside her and took her hand.

“So you still want to disappear?” he asked.

“Somewhere green,” Rey said, nodding. “Do you know a place?”

Ben placed his other hand over hers.

“I know a few, but there's something we must do first.”

Rey knew what it was, and she began to cry. She nodded through her tears.

“I know,” she said.

Rey sighed. Ben lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it.

“If we do it,” Rey said. “There's no going back.”

“Fear is the enemy,” Ben said, looking steadily into her eyes.

“Is this what Luke meant when he said we have more work to do?” Rey wondered.

Ben scoffed.

“Who knows what he meant. Maybe he doesn't even know. He has always liked to sound wise,” Ben said.

He touched her neck. His thumb swept against the delicate skin under her jaw.

“Once it's done we'll disappear. Somewhere green,” he said, and kissed her. Rey relaxed into his kiss.

“What will we do for the rest of our lives?” she murmured.

Ben's response was to pull her closer and deepen the kiss.

“Don't worry about it, sweetheart,” he said, his mouth briefly leaving hers.

“I'm not worried,” Rey replied.

A few minutes later, Rey pushed his hair back from his face and smiled at him.

“I'm not worried,” she repeated, as she felt the words resonate in her soul. It was true. Rey did not know what the future held, but she finally had a home. It was beautiful to belong with Ben.

The aftermath of the end of the First Order was a chaos that would take years to navigate, according to Leia. The _Supremacy_ continued to act as a holding cell for General Hux and a number of other high-ranking First Order officers. Finn and Poe were sent with Admiral Gildred to the _Supremacy_ to oversee the resistance occupation of the ship. They left early the next morning before Rey had a chance to say goodbye. Leia came with the news to Ben and Rey on the _Falcon_ , which was their temporary quarters on the base.

“We need to talk this morning,” Leia said, motioning for Ben and Rey to sit down with her in the main cabin. “Chewie, you too.”

Chewbacca complained, but sat down beside Ben.

“I'm promoting Poe Dameron to acting general,” said Leia. “I am stepping down.”

“Why?” Rey asked “This is your victory! You led the resistance here. You should lead us through it.”

“I must step down,” Leia repeated. “I cannot be the one to pardon my son, and the galaxy needs to move forward without anyone related to a Skywalker in an office of such power. It is the only way.”

“What will you do, then?” Ben asked.

“I will stay and offer counsel in the days ahead,” Leia said. “I am one of few left with political experience. I hope I can be useful.”

“You should not step down because of me,” Ben said. “If it means I face a trial, then so be it.”

The noble determination on his face crushed Rey's heart. She would not lose him, even if it meant becoming an outlaw herself.

Leia shook her head and said, “The desire for retribution after all of this is too great. As the last Supreme Leader, the only one alive, you would bear the blame for all of the First Order's crimes, even those committed by Snoke while you were his apprentice. I could not bear for you to be imprisoned for the rest of your life. I would break you out myself.”

Leia grabbed Ben's hand.

“Then where would we be? You'd have to take me into hiding with you, and none of us want that to happen.”

“You want us to disappear for a while,” Ben said.

“That is our plan,” Rey added.

“I thought it might be,” Leia said, nodding. “I think that is best, at least until you've been officially pardoned.”

A grim silence settled over them.

_I'm going with them_ , Chewie said. _The Falcon will be their home._

“Thanks, Chewie,” said Rey, tearing up. “I'm glad we won't be saying goodbye to you.” 

Rey looked at Leia, who was staring at her son's hand, which she still held in her grasp.

“Leia, what about the children? What will become of them?” Rey asked.

She wondered if they remembered their parents, or if they had been taken before those memories were formed.

“We will find families for them,” Leia said. “Loving families who will help them forget the horrors done to them on the _Supremacy_. We will make sure they are not separated.”

Rey frowned and asked, “All of them? Who would be able to adopt that many children?”

Leia shook her head slightly.

“You did not realize? All of those children are twins,” she said.

“Twins,” Rey repeated. “Why did they take only twins?”

“We might never know. The doctor still has not been identified,” said Leia. “We will send someone back to the rooms where you found the children to gather evidence but without medical records all we have to go on are the stories of the children.”

“What about the boy? The older one? FR-9982?” Rey asked. “He was alone.”

Leia lowered her eyes.

“When I spoke to the boy, he told me that one day the doctor took his sister away and she never came back.”

Rey covered her mouth with one hand. Leia reached over to hold the other.

“He will have a family soon,” she told Rey.

Leia let her words sit with them for a moment, then stood up.

“You should leave now,” she said.

She hugged Chewie first and said, “Thank you for everything, Chewie. Thank you for standing by Han all those years, and thank you for staying to fight with us.”

_You're welcome, Princess,_ Chewie said, patting her back and mussing her hair a little. Leia embraced Rey next.

“I thought of you as a daughter even before you married my son,” Leia said. “Thank you for bringing him back to me.”

Finally, Leia hugged her son.

“Promise you'll visit your mother,” she said. “You have your father's heart, but I hope your soul will be less restless than his.”

“We'll see you around, Mom,” Ben said, smiling down at her.

Leia squeezed their hands one more time, and then she left.

“I guess we're leaving now,” Rey said.

“Looks like it,” Ben agreed.

_Tell me where we're going,_ said Chewie, heading toward the cockpit.

Ben followed him, and after a moment of quiet reflection, Rey turned to join them.

“Rey?”

“Rose? We're, ah... we're about to leave,” Rey said.

“I know. The General told me to hurry if I wanted to see you off,” said Rose.

She crushed Rey with a warm hug.

“I'm going to miss you!” she exclaimed into Rey's shoulder.

“I'll miss you, too,” Rey said.

“Did you hear they made Finn a general?” Rose asked.

“No! That's great!” Rey said.

“Yeah, he was so pleased,” said Rose.

Rose swung her arms by her sides, then hugged herself.

“I'm going to help General Organa find homes for those kids,” Rose said. “She said I'll be an ambassador.”

Rose laughed.

“It sounds so strange to say that. I thought I'd always be a mechanic,” she said, grinning.

“You'll be a great ambassador,” said Rey, touching Rose's shoulder.

“Thanks.”

Rey hugged Rose one more time, and Ben came out from the cockpit to do the same. It was comforting to know that Rose would be by Leia's side after they were gone.

“Ready?” Ben asked, wrapping an arm around Rey.

“You said you had a plan. Where are we going first?” she asked.

“It's a surprise,” he said.

He kissed her temple and Rey followed him into the cockpit of the _Falcon_.

“Let's get out of here, Chewie,” said Ben.


	12. Balance

“We're here,” Ben said, as they dropped out of hyperspace.

Rey peered at the planet in front of them.

“That looks like a desert planet,” she said, unable to hide her disappointment. “Where are we?”

_Halm,_ said Chewie.

“Halm? What's on Halm?” asked Rey.

“You'll see,” Ben said.

They entered the planet's atmosphere and descended toward the desolate surface. There were scattered encampments near groups of industrial buildings, which looked to be abandoned.

“Is there anyone down there?” Rey wondered.

“If there is, they're probably First Order, hiding out,” said Ben. “This part of the planet was abandoned years ago.”

They landed and Rey's curiosity intensified. She followed Ben out of the _Falcon_ , with Chewie behind them.

“That's a mine,” Rey said. “This is a mining planet? Ben, why are we here?”

He turned around and walked backward for a few steps, smiling at her.

“You'll see,” he repeated.

They walked to the dark opening of the mine shaft.

“Wait, we're going in there?” Rey asked. “What's down there? And don't say, 'you'll see'!”

Ben motioned for her to follow him.

“Trust me,” he said. “Come on.”

_I'll stay here and keep watch,_ Chewie said.

Rey followed Ben into the mine. They ignited their sabers to light the way.

“What were they mining here?” Rey asked.

“A few things,” Ben said. “Once the Empire discovered this planet was a source of rare kyber, that became their main interest. Unfortunately for them, the crystals here are not easily found, and do not exist in quantities to make it worthwhile. Mine after mine was searched, but they never found more than a handful in one place.”

“How do you know this?” Rey asked.

Ben shrugged.

“Luke,” he said. “He came here once.”

“So, we're looking for a crystal?” asked Rey.

“Yes. For your own saber,” Ben said.

“How do you know we'll be able to find one?” Rey asked.

Ben smiled again, his face glowing in the silvery-white light of his lightsaber.

“One will find us,” he said, and began to advance through the tunnel.

Rey followed him, keeping his back within the green light that was cast from Luke's saber.

“How will we know when it's found us?” Rey asked.

“You'll hear it, if you aren't talking,” Ben said.

They walked in silence through the narrow tunnel. After what seemed like hours, Ben stopped.

“What?” Rey prodded him.

“Look at this,” Ben said, pressing himself against the side of the tunnel so that Rey could see around him.

There was a large opening ahead, a dark cavernous space in which the hum of their lightsabers echoed vaguely. Ben took Rey's hand and put away his lightsaber, pulling her toward the cavern.

“Close your eyes. Listen,” he said, as they stepped into the dark space.

Rey turned off her saber and closed her eyes.

“What am I listening for?” she whispered.

Ben did not answer, but pulled her closer and tightened his grip on her hand. Rey listened and heard nothing. She tried to breathe silently. After a few minutes, Ben directed her to follow him to the left, moving her hand along in front of him. She opened her eyes and saw nothing of her surroundings. It was completely black in the cave.

They moved slowly and softly together through the cave, and Rey wondered what he'd heard, if anything. Ben stopped again. He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand and stood in the silence, waiting. Rey closed her eyes and attempted to meditate with Ben in the force. It took her a while to find her way but once she did the connection between herself and the force and herself and Ben was more obvious than ever. Rey stood in awe of it for a while, feeling the force encircle and flow through her, through Ben, through the universe, and back. In her meditative state, Rey's ears began to ring, but it was not a painful sound. It was beautiful, like a song – like the sweet hum of a mother to a child.

Rey took a step forward, and stretched out her hand. Ben followed her. Rey continued to pursue the ringing in her ears, advancing one uncertain step at a time further into the darkness. Finally, her hand hit cold, crumbling rock.

Ben turned on his lightsaber and held it up to the spot where Rey's hand rested on glinting, dark black stone streaked with gray.

“There's nothing,” Rey said in disappointment.

“There's something,” Ben said. “We just can't see it.”

Rey got out her lightsaber and held it up hesitantly to the wall. Carefully, she sliced a chunk of rock off, controlling the fall of the debris with the force so that it made a neat pile at their feet.

There was a small vein of brilliant, sparkling crystal clearly visible in the new cross-section Rey had uncovered.

“A little more,” Ben suggested.

Rey lifted her saber again and sliced off more of the rock in front of them. She gasped as it fell away. There was a hole visible in the rock now, and it was lined with the same brilliant crystal of the vein, thin in most places, but thicker in others. Ben's saber hovered next to the wall, partially illuminating the inside of the tiny crystal cavern. Rey put her own saber away and peered inside.

“Do you see any pieces large enough?” Ben asked.

“Yes,” Rey said.

She reached inside and scrambled around with the her fingers for a moment.

“There's two,” she said, and pulled her hand out to show Ben.

He looked down at the kyber crystal chunks in Rey's hand.

“Perfect,” he said.

Rey stuck her hand back inside.

“That's it. Just the two,” she said.

“That's all we need,” Ben replied.

They hurried out of the mine. Chewie was sitting on a rock in front of the _Falcon_ waiting for them.

_Took you long enough_. _Did you find anything?_ he asked.

“We did,” Rey said, holding up her closed fist with a smile.

“What are you going to do with your old saber?” Rey asked Ben.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

Rey tried to give him one of the crystals from her palm, but he refused to take it.

“Those are yours,” he said.

“I don't need two.”

“You don't?” he asked. “I thought you preferred to fight with a staff.”

“Oh!”

Rey looked at the crystals and imagined dueling her husband with a lightsaber staff. She smiled. It would keep him on his toes.

“I know Luke wanted me to rebuild his lightsaber, but I think all it belongs somewhere else,” Rey said.

Their next stop was Ahch-To.

“We could stay here for a while,” Rey said.

“It would be the first place I'd look for you,” Ben replied.

“You're right. It's just that the caretakers of the island are not very fond of me. I don't know how we're going to convince them to leave,” she said.

Rey led Ben to the burnt ruins of the tree that used to hold the sacred Jedi texts. They sat staring at the blackened remnants.

“How are we going to do it?” Rey wondered.

“There is a darkness here. It can be redirected,” said Ben. “One of us will have to draw it out.”

“It should be me,” Rey said instantly.

“No,” he said. “I've known the dark side longer. I'll do it.”

“Let's go find the caretakers,” Rey said.

They marched up to the center square surrounded by stone huts.

“Hello? Hello?!” Rey called.

She began stomping around, peeking into the hut windows. All of them were dark and empty.

“Where are they?” she asked.

Ben climbed up one of the steep hills above the huts and stood on the rocks at the top, surveying the island.

“Down there,” he said, pointing.

Rey climbed up and stood beside him.

“Who are they?” she asked, frowning.

The caretakers were welcoming visitors from boats down at the rocky shoreline. Creatures bearing a strong resemblance to the caretakers were climbing off their boats and unloading baskets and barrels.

“It must be the males of the species,” Ben said. “They're bringing back their catch.”

“I never saw them when I was here with Luke,” Rey said.

“How long were you here?” Ben asked.

Rey did not answer. She was beginning to panic about their task.

“This is their home,” she breathed. “We can't do this!”

It was Ben's turn to frown, but he did not reply.

“Was there life on Exogol?” asked Rey. “Did we...did we...?”

“Nothing could survive there,” Ben said, taking her hands in his.

“Did you know that before we went there to destroy it?” Rey asked.

Ben did not answer. He looked down at their hands.

“We must bring balance to the galaxy,” he said. “This place cannot remain a Jedi shrine. Now that it has been plotted, it will become a place of pilgrimage. Force-sensitives will find their way here to worship the Jedi.”

Rey looked around.

“We should meditate,” she said, leading Ben down the hill.

They went to the spot where they'd been married weeks earlier and once again sat back-to-back. Rey lifted her arms to shoulder height, elbows bent, and Ben did the same. Hands clasped, breaths rising and falling together, they reached out to the force as one. Time ceased to exist as the force began to overwhelm them. Their bodies left the stone on which they were sitting and the force pressed against them, lifting them. The force filled their chests, pumped through their veins, and caressed their skin.

Rey could feel darkness, deep and cold beneath the surface of the force flowing around her, but she was not afraid of losing herself to its pull. Now that she knew what it was to be consumed by the dark side, the temptation and seduction of its call were gone. She saw in her mind the balance of the force, the necessity of darkness to the cycle of all things, and the transcendental beauty of rebirth after destruction. The darkness itself was not what twisted minds and souls toward hatred and evil, just as it was not the light that started the battle with the darkness. It was human weakness. It was fear.

When she opened her eyes, Rey was surprised to see that they were no longer hovering above the stone together – they were suspended high in the air above the cliffs. Down by the water, the caretakers and their seafaring counterparts were pointing and gaping up at them.

“Ben,” she whispered. “We're – ”

“I know,” he said.

Slowly, they descended back down to the ground. As they did, Rey heard a commotion coming from the caretakers.

“Do you hear that?” she asked.

Rey and Ben followed the sound, and found the caretakers, the fishermen, and a hoard of chittering Porgs waiting for them by the _Falcon._ As they stood staring at the gathering, the calls of the giant sea-beasts greeted them, and the enormous creatures could be seen in the distance poking their heads up over the edge of the cliffs.

“Oh, no,” Rey said, recognizing a look of admiration in the bulging eyes of the caretakers that she'd never received before.

“Show me the cave,” Ben said, ignoring the stares of the gathered beings before them.

“What about them?” Rey asked, motioning to the crowd before them. “Shouldn't we try to get them on the _Falcon_? Before we go down there?”

“I just want to see it. For now,” Ben said.

Rey led him to the edge of the underground cave. They stood with their feet tangled under the dead vines along edge of the dark pit. She took Ben's hand.

“Last time I fell in,” she said. “It was very cold.”

They jumped over the edge together, and as they fell down toward the frigid water below the force met them mid-air to slow their descent. Ben wrapped his arms around her and fell backward into the ebbing wave of the force that surrounded them. They rolled and tumbled downward together, ending up on a narrow rock outcropping on the edge of the cave.

“Ow...” Rey groaned, sitting up.

“At least we're not swimming,” Ben said.

They stood. Ben immediately began walking in the direction of the mirrored wall Rey had described to him over a year ago, when she first touched his hand through the force bond.

“Isn't it creepy?” Rey asked, walking up behind him and peering into the reflection, expecting to see an infinite line of themselves stretching on into infinity.

But the mirror showed nothing more than a simple reflection of Rey and Ben this time. Ben touched the mirrored surface, and his reflection did the same. Ben closed his eyes, and Rey became anxious.

When Ben opened his eyes, he stared at himself in the mirror for a minute in silence.

“What do you see?” he asked.

“Just... a reflection,” Rey said.

“Touch the wall,” he insisted.

Rey hesitated, but she stepped up beside him and placed her hand on the cave wall. As soon as she did, the reflection changed. Now, she was looking at Ben instead of her own reflection.

“Do you see me?” she asked in a whisper.

“Yes,” he said, and his reflection's mouth moved as he spoke.

“Show us how to bring balance to this place,” Rey said to the force.

Ben's reflection raised a brow at her.

“It might work,” Rey said.

They stared at the reflection, and for a moment it seemed the mirror would show them nothing but their bond to one another. Then, Rey's vision seemed to blur. Ben's reflection slid slowly to the right as if it was being dragged back to it's rightful owner. Rey followed it with her eyes, turning her head as it moved.

Ben did the same, turning his head to the left, until they were both looking at the same reflection. Rey's stomach flip-flopped as the reflection stopped moving and came back into focus. She was now looking at a strange combination of Ben's face mixed with her own features. Somehow, the reflection was both of their faces at the same time – his dark eyes behind, then in front of, then back behind her own. The line of the jaw was somehow both sharp and soft at the same time. Their features wavered in and out of prominence independently of each other, creating infinite iterations of their combined reflections.


	13. Home

Ben stared at the reflection in the mirror for a few minutes, then took his hand away from the wall.

“We have not yet found the darkness on this planet. Do you feel it calling?” he asked.

He looked around, and took a few steps toward the foaming water below them.

“It is being held back. Under the water,” he said.

He turned back to look at Rey and pointed in her direction.

“Behind that wall,” he continued.

He paced a few more steps in a slow circle.

“Beneath our feet,” he said, looking down.

“Isn't that a good thing?” Rey asked, shivering.

Now that Ben had mentioned the call of the darkness, Rey could sense it growing.

“No...” Ben murmured.

He sat down on the edge of the stone plateau above the water. Rey joined him.

“The darkness rises to meet the light. They are still separated – darkness below this hidden lake and behind the cave walls, and the light above ground. Only those in search of the dark side would venture down here willingly,” said Ben.

He leapt up and went over to the wall again.

“The mirrored wall is neither light nor dark,” he said. “Do you see?”

Rey went over and put her hand on the wall again.

“Yes,” she said. “Ben, I know what we have to do.”

He looked up and nodded, a silent agreement forming in their minds.

“How do we get out of here?” he asked.

Rey pointed to the opposite side of the cave.

“I swam out. There's another opening, but it's small,” she said, and pointed to a small point of light barely visible in the rock wall at the other side of the lake.

Ben scanned the cave again.

“We could climb the vines,” he said, pointing to the spot where they'd landed earlier. The black vines did indeed reach all the way down the cave walls. They touched the lapping water at the bottom.

“Will they hold us?” Rey asked.

“If they don't, it looks like we'll have to swim,” Ben said.

They walked over to the vines. Ben tugged on them experimentally, and when they did not come away from the cave wall, he shrugged, and began climbing. Rey joined him. The force helped them hang on across the long arching ceiling of the cave, but it was a grueling journey. When they finally made it out, they lay on the ground in exhaustion, panting from the effort. Ben reached for her hand, and held it over his chest. Rey could feel his heartbeat steadily slow as they rested.

“We should have swam out,” he said.

They laughed, and stood up. Ben took out his lightsaber.

“Ready?” he asked.

Rey responded by taking out Luke's saber and igniting it. Together, they stepped up to the edge of the cave opening. Ben pointed his saber at the ground and held his other palm out toward Rey. She did the same. Her feet slid a few inches backward before she used the force to brace her weight against the force-push Ben was giving her. At the same time, they plunged their lightsabers into the rock and then slowly began walking in a circle. As they spiraled outward from the pit, the rock fell away and crashed into the lake below.

They continued to cut away at the ceiling of the cave until it was nearly gone. Then they force-lifted the piles of rock and hurled them out into the sea. Their last act was to carve steps into the side of the cave wall, leading directly down to the mirror. Rey and Ben stood in front of the mirrored wall one last time.

“Is it done?” Rey asked.

“Maybe,” Ben said.

He walked the length of the mirror, running his fingertips along the surface. He stopped on the opposite side, where smooth wall broke into a rough outcropping of rock. He lifted his saber and cut a man-sized opening into the rock wall. The chill emanating from the rock grew stronger. Ben stared at his handiwork, then looked at Rey, before stepping through the newly-cut archway.

“Ben?” she asked, poking her head into the darkness.

“It's another cave,” Ben said, holding his saber in front of him in an effort to make out their surroundings.

They walked slowly forward, and stopped when the light from their sabers revealed a drop-off into a sheer, deep cliff. The sound of dripping and trickling water far below echoed up from the depths of the pit.

“The darkness of Ahch-To,” he said, looking down into the pit.

Rey looked down as well. She could sense the bubbling well of darkness in the depths below them.

“Why is the darkness so cold? When the dark side had hold of me, it burned like fire,” Rey said.

“Why is the light so warm, but the Jedi so cold and detached?” asked Ben. “The Sith fear love will make them weak, and the Jedi fear passion will destroy their light.”

He held her hand.

“That's why you could never be a Jedi,” he told her. “You use your emotions. You can't shut them off. Not completely. If Luke had trained you like he did me, you would have failed and turned to the dark side.”

Rey could not deny it, even though she wanted to. It had hurt when Luke refused to train her, but part of her she knew he was right. There was something in Rey that understood the darkness far more easily than the light.

“It's different being here with you,” Rey said. “The call of the darkness is not as strong.”

“You didn't know what it was before,” Ben said.

Rey stepped back from the edge of the pit and tugged him along with her.

“Anger comes so easily to me, and the force along with it... but you never lost yourself to the dark side, even as Kylo Ren. Not completely. That's why you are my balance, Ben. You are my light. I am your darkness.”

Ben smiled, and laughed a little.

“You're wrong. It's the other way around,” he said.

“It's not, though,” Rey insisted. “It was only stubbornness that kept me from the dark side. I wanted to join you, from the first time you asked, Ben. I wanted the power. It's just that I wanted _you_ back more.”

Rey was now crying.

“Loving you is all that kept me from the dark side,” she said.

Ben suddenly pulled her toward him and kissed her. A few minutes later, he spoke.

“Don't be ashamed of your darkness. It doesn't mean you were supposed to be a Sith vessel,” he said, putting a voice to the thoughts in Rey's mind.

Rey lay her head on his chest and he hugged her tighter.

“We don't even know if the ghost of Palpatine was truthful when it claimed you as an heir. It might have all been a lie,” Ben said.

“It felt true,” Rey mumbled into his shoulder.

Ben moved one hand to rest between her shoulder blades. The warmth of his palm was comforting.

“The Sith are adept at using the force to deceive,” he said. “Even if it's true, it doesn't matter. There is nothing left of Palpatine in the galaxy. The Sith, like the Jedi, are no more.”

“Aren't there more force-aligned planets? Dark ones as well as light?” Rey asked. “Old temples, writings, and relics are still out there. One day someone force-sensitive will find them.”

“Not if we find them first,” Ben said.

“So, that is our work,” Rey said, remembering Luke's admonition.

Ben nodded.

“First, we're going somewhere green, and we're going to make it our home,” he said.

“What should we do about this cave?” Rey asked. “Should we leave it open?”

Ben looked down at the pit again.

“The dark wellspring is deep and hidden below. The light and the dark meet here, like they do in the wall. It is a place of balance and truth. We should leave it.”

When they exited the cave, they were met by a group of caretakers marveling at the mirrored wall, which was still icy and cold to the touch. There was enough of the cave ceiling left above the wall to shield it from direct sunlight for most of the day. As the suns set, light touched the wall and the layer of frost over the smooth surface melted away, leaving a brilliantly-shining sheet of rock illuminated until the suns dropped below the opposite cliffs. The caretakers and their partners stood like statues in awe of the wall until twilight. Rey, Ben, and Chewie were offered a large basket of fish and flasks of the green milk that Rey knew came from the sea beasts that sat basking on the sides of the cliffs during the day. Chewie built a fire and cooked their dinner over it. A flurry of Porgs followed his every move, much to his annoyance.

“I think they like him because he's the only other fluffy thing on this rock,” Rey said, chuckling as Chewie waved his arms at some Porgs that had gotten underfoot as he tended the fire.

They ate a surprisingly tasty meal, washed it down with the green milk, and watched the fire die. Just as they were preparing to return to the _Falcon_ for the night, a strange sound startled them, making the Porgs chirp and scatter in excitement.

 _What are they doing now?_ Chewie asked, looking into the distance.

It was the caretakers. They were making a high-pitched screeching sound and were marching toward the _Falcon_ in a line, carrying a variety of unidentifiable items in their arms. Ben and Rey stood and waited for the procession to reach them. When the caretaker in the lead stopped in front of them, halting the line, the screeching stopped. The caretaker held out a bolt of deep blue fabric to Rey and bowed when she accepted it. The next caretaker did the same to Ben, gifting him a length of heavy black cloth.

Every member of the procession had a gift for them. Soon their arms were full of fabric, leather, jewelry, salves and balms, jars of thick deep purple syrup, knives with decorative engraving, sandals, socks, blankets, pillows, and even a set of engraved stools with seats wide enough to use for meditation.

“Where did they get all of this stuff? When did they make it?” Rey wondered.

The last two members of the procession gifted Chewie tools and knives, all with elaborate engraved designs.

 _Thank you_ , Chewie said, bowing.

The group of empty-handed caretakers formed a circle around them, and one of them began beating on a drum. The rest chanted exuberantly, and began linking arms as they swayed to the drumbeat. Ben put his arm around Rey, who held onto Chewie's elbow, and they stood awkwardly smiling at the caretakers until the song was over.

Another drumbeat began, this one much faster, and the caretakers broke into pairs with their fisherman partners, and began dancing and making odd, contented sounds that might have been laughter. At some point during the dance, one of them rebuilt the fire. Ben and Rey positioned their new stools next to it and watched the celebration. Chewie sat on one of the crates they'd brought out of the _Falcon_ earlier.

 _When's this going to be over?_ he grumbled.

Ben shrugged and accepted a cup from one of the caretakers, who thrust it into his hands and jabbered at him, pointing to the contents a few times. Ben sniffed it, made a face, then took a sip.

“Oh, that's... not good,” he said.

“What is it?” Rey asked.

“I don't know, but it's strong,” Ben said. “And sour."

 _Let me try it_ , Chewie said.

Ben gladly handed the cup over to him. Chewie sniffed it once, then threw it back in one gulp. A caretaker appeared and handed Chewie another cup before offering one to Rey. She accepted it, and handed it to Chewie immediately after he downed his second one.

“Do you actually like it?” she asked.

 _It's better than the milk,_ Chewie said.

The mysterious drink had a much stronger effect on the caretakers than it did on Chewie. They began dropping to the ground, sitting in happy, glassy-eyed groups leaning against one another, and soon were asleep. Most of them snored loudly.

After a much needed night's sleep, they were ready to leave Ahch-To. Ben and Chewie remained secretive about their destination. When they dropped out of hyperspace in the Outer Rim and made their approach, Rey stood up and stared out of the window at the planet in front of them.

“Welcome home,” Ben said.

“It's green! I can see it from here,” she said. “Look at all the water. It must be gorgeous down there. What planet is this?”

“Auratera,” Ben said. “There's an old Jedi temple here, over a strong vergence in the force. Luke once told me stories about this place. There should be some civilization, but they are not space-faring.”

“I love it,” Rey said.

Ben laughed.

“You haven't seen it yet,” he said.

“I don't have to. I can feel it,” Rey replied. “This is home.”


	14. Epilogue (Ben)

Ben could not recall his first impression of Auratera. His memory of their arrival on the planet was only of the joy on Rey's face as she stepped off the _Falcon_ onto the green earth of their chosen home-world.

Most of Ben's memories in the months after his return to the light were of Rey's blinding smile. He was continually amazed that her smiles were for him. If the force had given him _that_ as a vision Kylo Ren would have ceased to exist immediately.

Instead, the force had given him a vision of their joint destruction of Exogol, and a vision of Rey sitting on his lap in the TIE Whisper, telling him that she would return with him to the First Order. It had shown him Rey wearing her black, First Order clothes, standing with him in the throne room, their hands clasped and held triumphantly in the air.

The force had shown Rey visions of their love. It had only shown Ben what they must do. If he was honest, Ben held a tiny grudge against it for that reason. However, whenever he began to resent the force, he remembered how mercilessly he as Kylo Ren had strangled all hope in the existence of love from his mind after Rey's rejection. Perhaps in those circumstances, he had blocked out those visions of her before they could manifest.

They made a home on Auratera near the ruins of the old temple, called Ahclas. The name was chiseled in the stone over the entrance. It took them months to fully explore and understand the vergence there, and it was over a year before they made any alterations to allow the light and the dark to meet.

The _Falcon_ was their home for the first year. They made connections with the inhabitants of the villages and towns across the planet. While they were met with suspicion at first, the world was a supremely peaceful one. Visitors were rare – only a few relatives of those who had fled Auratera in generations past and knew the way back.

Once the Auraterians trusted that Ben, Rey, and Chewie were not bringing the galaxy to their doorstep, and with it the threat of occupation and war, they were kind and welcoming. They led simple lives in small tight-knit communities. Each village had a unique artistic tradition. Artisans traveled from village to village, trading crafts and entertaining their neighbors.

The days were long, and the nights were rare, thanks to the two bright suns of the system. The light of the force was strong and it seemed to give everyone and everything on the planet boundless energy. It was easy to forget that one's body needed rest, and easy to ignore the signs of exhaustion. The local traditions involved rituals and holidays to ensure proper rest and renewal, but often children resisted sleep until the night came, sometimes to the point of delirium. It was not unusual to see young Auraterians with dark, sunken eyes playing with alarming vigor outside their homes.

Rey loved the long days, and sometimes she resisted rest with as much stubbornness as the village kids. Whenever it rained, which was often, she would put on one of the Auraterians' customary large rain hats and wander through the forest. Ben and Chewie stayed on the ship on those days – Chewie because it would take him ages to dry off, and Ben because he did not enjoy de-mudding the sticky, clay-like earth from his boots after a hike.

Once they settled in on the planet, Chewie came and went from Auratera. One day he returned in the _Falcon_ with news. Ben Solo had been pardoned and was free to roam the galaxy. His mother wanted to see him. She was on Naboo.

Rey did not know that Naboo was the home-world of Emperor Palpatine, and Ben did not have the heart to tell her. Rey did not know much of the galaxy's history, since she had not attended a formal school on Jakku. She learned languages out of necessity as a child, and an old woman had agreed to teach her how to read in exchange for portions. Her memories of her parents were few and fuzzy, but she did remember attending a small village school before they sold her off.

“I remember learning numbers there,” Rey told him. “Not much else.”

When they arrived on Naboo, their desire to do so without fanfare fell apart immediately. The _Falcon_ was recognized and they disembarked to the stares of many curious bystanders. Ben noticed Rey's hand move to her saber staff, and he took her arm in his. Luckily, Chewie's presence was enough to make the crowd back away.

Leia met them with a welcoming party of Rose, Finn, Poe, C3PO, BB-8, R2-D2... and Lando Calrissian.

“Ben!” Lando said warmly, as Ben's mother hugged him.

“Uncle Lando,” Ben said, holding out his hand. Lando took it and pulled Ben into an embrace.

“It's good to see you, boy,” he said.

Ben struggled to speak.

“You too,” was all he managed to say.

“I have something for you,” Lando said.

He reached for his belt, and seconds later placed a blaster in Ben's hand.

“It was Han's,” said Lando. “You should have it.”

“Thank you,” Ben said, staring at the blaster. He felt the rest of the group watching as he holstered it on his own belt.

“There's someone else here to see you,” said Rose, breaking the silence. She stepped aside to coax the last member of the greeting party from behind her generous, flowing robe.

“This is Kori,” she said.

It was the boy formerly know as FR-9982. He did not seem to have grown much since they rescued him from the _Supremacy_ , but he looked healthy and he smiled shyly.

Many of the children from the _Supremacy_ had found a home on Naboo, as had many of the former stormtroopers that rebelled. Poe was running a flight academy off-planet, and Finn was in charge of helping the stormtroopers transition into civilian life, finding work and homes across a variety of systems in the galaxy.

“Hello,” Kori said. “You were the one who put me on that ship.”

The boy pointed to the _Falcon_.

“I still don't understand how you did that,” Kori said.

“We used the force,” Rey said, crouching down next to him with a smile.

“I've heard of the force. Rose talks about it, and so does Finn,” said Kori.

“So does Ms. Leia,” said Rose.

“I know,” said Kori. “And she said when you come to visit, I can see your lightsabers.”

He looked hopefully at Rey, then at Ben.

Rey laughed and said, “Of course we'll show you our lightsabers.”

She stood up and said, “This is mine.”

Rey ignited the dual yellow blades of her saber staff and twirled it slowly a few times in front of her body. Kori's eyes lit up immediately.

“Wow...” he said softly. He tore his eyes away from Rey's staff and looked at Ben.

“Can I see yours, too?” he asked.

Ben obliged, and Kori jumped as the white blade of Ben's lightsaber was ignited.

“Whoa,” he said, looking up as Ben lifted the saber in the air for a moment.

“There's one more,” Rey said. “Do you want to see it?”

“Yeah!” asked Kori.

Rey smiled and took Luke's lightsaber from her belt. She held it out to Finn, who looked at Leia and waited for her to nod before he accepted it. He grinned as he swung the green saber in the air a few times for Kori.

Before they returned home, Ben and Rey took Finn back to Ahch-To and trained him in the art of lightsaber dueling. They were warmly welcomed by the caretakers. Finn became their student, though he was nearly done training by that time. They took him to the mirrored wall, and waited outside as he entered the cave behind the mirror to meditate on truths hidden and unpleasant. Finn left Ahch-To with a mission – to start an academy for force-sensitives. There would be no lightsaber training. Even if they wanted to train students to fight, where would they find the kyber to build weapons? Leia and Finn would hire academic teachers and they would teach the children to meditate and find balance and guidance in the force.

Now that Ben's named was cleared, he traveled the galaxy with Rey righting the imbalances in the force created by thousands of years of separation, fear, and hatred between the worshippers of the light and the darkness.

It was not until they'd traveled every corner of the galaxy and returned to Auratera for a long, much-needed rest in their green home-world, that they considered training a new generation of force-wielders. It was the final fear they must face – would they be able to train students without losing them to extreme views? The Jedi and the Sith were dead, but their beliefs and actions still rippled through the galaxy. Their stories remained.

Though Auratera remained forgotten and sparsely inhabited, there were more than a few force-sensitives in the population. Something about living on a planet that held such a strong vergence seemed to produce a larger number than might normally be expected. Steeped as they were in the light side of the force, Auraterians had no fear of the darkness. They did not even have a name for it – or so Ben thought for quite some time.

Death on Auratera was a rarely a tragedy. There was virtually no sickness, and it was unusual for anyone to die from anything other than old age, peacefully in their sleep. Children were rarely injured, seemingly from immense good luck, despite carrying on recklessly as all children do.

Ben kept detailed journals of their adventures across the galaxy, and he wrote volumes about life on Auratera as well. In doing this, he discovered that the tranquil existence the inhabitants enjoyed was not without a darkness of its own. It became clear when they began to identify the force-sensitive children, spending a great deal of time in the villages interacting with them as they played before and after school.

Children sometimes disappeared, never to be seen again. The other children seemed to have no memory of their playmates once they were gone. Finally, Rey was able to get one of the children to tell her the truth – or rather, the truth as they understood it.

“He went to the healer,” the girl whispered furtively.

The healer was not a person, as Ben and Rey learned when the girl drew them a map. The healer was a second vergence hidden deep in the heart of the thickest, wildest forest on Auratera. There was a reason no villages bordered the dark woods. It was the planet's dark secret.

“How did we miss this?” Rey asked in horror, as they stood in the humid forest, staring down at a dark pit lined with thick vegetation, emitting a familiar cold darkness.

“It might be the only planet in the galaxy with more than one vergence,” said Ben.

It took months for them to work out that most of the children had visited “the healer” at some point in their lives, when they had been disobedient or otherwise naughty. The majority were so traumatized after meeting the darkness of the force for the first time that they never dared to disobey or be unkind again.

The ones who were brought back a second time never returned. Perhaps all it took was a peek into the pit, and they were drawn in by the darkness. The plants growing along the walls were not found anywhere else on the planet, and they seemed to reach toward anyone who passed by, like surface plants reached toward the sunlight.

Ben and Rey knew what they had to do. They felled the trees and burned down the dark forest, and in doing so revealed themselves as force-wielders to the Auraterians. Then, they waited.

Eventually, parents of force-sensitives came to them, asking them to help their wayward children who struggled to conform to the pure lightness that overwhelmed their world and their culture. No more children on Auratera were abandoned to the darkness in secrecy and shame. They came to live with Ben and Rey, and learned about the balance of the force, in the shadow of the ruined temple, on a low hill that rose just high enough to give sight to the demolished dark forest in the distance, where the darkness still lived, now doused in the light for all to see on the long, bright days of Auratera.


End file.
